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City of the Saints

Page 39

by D. J. Butler


  Her face was dark with despair and she looked beautiful.

  The plascrete floor filled his vision and then pressed against his face. The blows didn’t stop and blood, phlegm, and bile oozed betweens his lips and puddled warm and sticky around his head.

  After a while, Poe breathed again.

  He was picked up and dragged, knees scraping on the floor. Blue light globes whizzed by him impossibly fast, and he thought they might be stars. Was he in the ether, then? Was he stung to death by the Scorpion and racing around the outline of its celestial body, waiting for the abyss to take him?

  Then there was a door.

  Had he come a million miles?

  A hundred feet?

  He was hauled through the door and dropped to the plascrete again. Slam! A buzzing noise, and for a time he drifted. It was the first day of creation, he decided, and if the world was without form and void, then the buzzing sounds must be the Spirit of God hovering upon the waters. He knew that if he waited long enough, he would eventually hear the Lord’s first words and then the firmament would divide the waters.

  “I think he’s awake,” turned out to be the creative incantation. That didn’t seem quite right to Poe, but with the words came light, shaky, elusive, and painful, but enough to see by. Light and a plain of stone.

  “Mrarmgaaaarble,” he tried to say, but failed. Creation responded, though, in the firmament that seared his body, throwing a violent mass of blood and sputum from the waters below into the waters above and out upon the dry land. Poe didn’t feel able, in clean conscience, to pronounce creation good.

  “Ick, he’s in bad fookin’ shape, though,” was the second mantra of creation.

  “Poe?” He recognized Roxie’s voice.

  “Mmmmmmalive,” Poe managed to mumble. His lips felt like they had been flattened under hammers. Man, created in the images of the gods after having been run over by divine steam-trucks. “I’m alive.”

  “Worse luck you,” complained another voice that Poe now recognized as belonging to the Irishman O’Shaughnessy. “I was hoping you were dead, for your sake.”

  Pffffffft-ankkkh! Pffffffft-ankkkh!

  The two Striders trundled along at a surprisingly good clip, bobbing up and down as they went like they were picking worms out of the soil. They weren’t as fast as the Jim Smiley on a straight flat road, of course, but the chicken-like legs and claws meant that the things could run like wild animals across the landscape, leaping irrigation ditches, high-stepping over tangled brush, and vaulting wooden fences. Occasionally, one of the pilots cut it too close and a big metal claw reduced a shed or a root cellar or a gate to splinters and rubble in a single blow.

  The Mexican machines were impressive but Sam was pretty sure they couldn’t swim. The Jim Smiley had them there.

  The big metal chickens headed closer to the mountains, looming up like shadowy giants to block out the stars. Sam had seen plenty of mountains back East but nothing like these enormous sprawling Himalayans. It wasn’t just the fact that they were tall that made them imposing, it was the fact that they were suddenly tall—they sprang out of the valley floor and shot another mile or more nearly straight up into the sky, like a row of teeth around an immense cultivated tongue.

  Pffffffft-ankkkh!

  In the absence of a binnacle, Sam watched the stars to keep his bearing, more by habit than by necessity, since the mountains were such unavoidable landmarks. They circled around the southern edge of the Great Salt Lake City (Sam could see the blue glow of the city center’s many Franklin Poles from miles away), staying off the roads and away from farmhouses where light showed. Crossing the farmland at a run showed Sam the vastness of the Mormons’ network of irrigation canals and small roads and he was duly impressed. He was a man who prided himself on valuing industry almost as much as he valued innovation.

  The Mormons had both, in spades. It was too bad, he thought, that they were so hopelessly strange. They might have made good Americans.

  The night sky was clear but as the Striders veered left across the wide, flat benches of the mountains’ foothills, turning to come at the city on its east side, Sam chanced to look to the south and saw what he took for flashes of lightning, striking over and over again in the same spot, high up in the air.

  “That’s a queer-looking storm,” he observed. The sight of the city coming closer made the Jim Smiley feel imminent, and he could almost taste a Partagás on his tongue. “It’s awfully local to the top of that mountain. Maybe there’s a vein of metal up there attracting all the electricity. You ought to send prospectors, Mr. President.”

  “That’s no storm,” Rockwell growled. “That’s Timpanogos.”

  Sam gulped. “Pratt’s place?” He watched the lightning flash some more and realized that the “storm” was even more local than he had at first imagined—the lightning appeared to be striking over and over again in exactly the same place. “Is it possible those flashes are our comrades, putting an end to the threat of an airborne assault upon Chicago?”

  “Your Irishman’s a lightning wizard, then, is he?” the dwarf asked belligerently. “O’Franklin, was that his name? Now he’s jest shooting lightning bolts at Pratt and his airships? That’s quite a show, then, and I’m sad I’m missing it.”

  “It’s possible,” Young said. His voice was cold and hard. “There’s a darker possibility.”

  “That’s how he charges up the airships,” Rockwell offered.

  “With lightning bolts?” Sam was dumbfounded. Most electricks were powered by some sort of generator that turned motion into small amounts of electricity—the motion of a turning, steam-powered engine, for instance, or the motion of falling water. To reach out and harness the fire of heaven directly was a Franklinesque act, if not a downright Promethean one. He felt no small amount of awe and his teeth ground upon each other over and over where by rights a good Partagás should have been.

  “Jebus,” Coltrane muttered. “Heaven help Chicago.”

  “Or us,” Rockwell offered. “There’s no guarantee he’s planning to attack a Gentile city.”

  A pall of silence settled over the carriage.

  The Striders turned north. They tramped through the foothills above the farms now, so there weren’t any more ditches or fences to jump or sheds to avoid. Mule deer scattered at the Striders’ approach, and dog-like creatures that might have been coyotes.

  “What was your offer, then, Mr. Clemens?” Brigham Young asked. His voice sounded deliberately cheerful.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I can guess what the English had to offer,” Young said. “And the secessionists, for that matter—either of them might have offered me land, to the north or south of my Kingdom, that would have been very valuable. But I don’t want the Wyoming Territory.”

  “Who does?” Sam agreed. “But what about Colorado, with its silver fields?”

  “Is that the Union’s offer, then?” Young asked. “Join with us to prevent secession, and you can have the silver of the Rocky Mountains? Couldn’t I get the same thing from the Southern states, in the event of their victory?”

  “You certainly could,” Sam conceded, “and the victorious United States could offer you land all the way from St. George to Mexico, so land promises are cheap. Which is why the Union didn’t send me to promise you land.”

  “No?” Rockwell sounded curious.

  “No,” Sam continued, “my offer is one trainload of fornication pants, sizes to be specified by a duly appointed agent of the Kingdom.”

  Young snorted, then began to laugh.

  “I don’t mind fornication pants myself,” Rockwell said, shrugging, as Young continued to guffaw. “The buttons up the front make it easier to empty your bladder quick and sometimes that can be a real advantage.”

  “Urination trousers.” Sam grinned, knowing that he was reeling them in. He was, after all, still on a diplomatic mission, and when the evening’s crisis was over, whoever was still standing in the Lion House would have to make a
decision about the war. “Micturition leggings, if you prefer.”

  “Pissing pants!” Rockwell barked, and he started laughing, too.

  The dwarf just shook his head like he thought everyone around him was crazy.

  “All pants to be delivered by train to the Great Salt Lake City,” Sam finished. He jabbed an imaginary cigar at Young’s chest for emphasis. “On the new Transcontinental Railroad, one hundred percent owned and operated by the Kingdom of Deseret.”

  Young stopped laughing.

  “All land to be provided and all track laid at the expense of the United States government,” Sam added. “Along with rolling stock up to five million dollars in value, complete training in railroad operations for up to two hundred persons of your choice, and a ten year maintenance guarantee for the entire length of the track.”

  “President Buchanan really wants me in the war on his side,” Young observed.

  “President Buchanan really doesn’t want a war at all,” Sam disagreed. “And he thinks that the best way to avoid one is to have the Kingdom of Deseret on his side from the beginning.”

  “Patrolling the skies over Richmond and Atlanta,” Young guessed.

  Sam shrugged. “If need be. Maybe simple telegraph messages from you to Richmond and Atlanta would suffice.”

  “The telegraph doesn’t connect to Salt Lake yet,” Young pointed out.

  “Oh, did I forget that part?” Sam asked coyly. “Of course we’d connect the Great Salt Lake City to the American telegraph network first. I’m told it could be done in a matter of mere weeks.”

  Young was silent for a minute. Sam leaned into the cool dry air of the night, feeling his hair ruffle and imagining himself as the victorious figurehead on the prow of a mighty ship of state.

  “Your gift is something of a Trojan horse,” Young finally said.

  “I missed the part about the horses,” Rockwell grunted. “How many horses?”

  “The United States has no interest in infringing on the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Deseret,” Sam said quickly. “The railroad would carry no troops, unless you wanted them.”

  “I’m not worried about guns.”

  “What, then? Fornication pants?”

  “Yes,” Young snapped, “fornication pants! And Southern cotton and French wine and Virginia tobacco and manufactured goods from the mills of the North! And anything else that would make my people soft and weak and dependent on a Gentile for anything!”

  Sam rocked back on his heels. “That’s commerce, Mr. President,” he said. “We’re all dependent on each other.” He gestured down at the valley below. “You could trade your sugar beets, your wheat, and whatever else you grow, make, or dig out of these mountains, and get the things your people want.”

  “What they want, maybe. But I can’t get in trade the things my people need,” Young growled. “Independence. Pride. Freedom from persecution. Open borders and commerce work very well, Mr. Clemens, when you are a powerful people with wealth. They’re not nearly as useful to a small, persecuted folk like us.”

  “You’re afraid of persecution?” Sam asked, slightly mystified. “It’d be your railroad, you could decide who rides it and who has to walk! How would you be any worse off than you are today?”

  “I do worry about persecution,” Young admitted, and he pounded the side of the Strider’s carriage with his balled fist. “And I am right to do so! More than Gentile bullets, though, or Gentile tar and feathers, I worry about Gentile trade goods. I worry about my children and grandchildren, and the seductive power of material things. The first step on the road is fornication pants, Mr. Clemens. The second is fornication. And at the end of that path, my people will cease to exist, not because they have been murdered but because they have become your people, and snuffed out their own unique lamps to do so.”

  Sam opened his mouth, found he had nothing to say, and closed it again.

  As the Striders dropped out of the foothills, past the first tall Franklin Poles and into the outskirts of the Great Salt Lake City where Sam’s steam-truck waited, Sam began to hear gunshots. Sam tried not to think about who was shooting whom, and prepared to switch vehicles.

  The lot where the Jim Smiley was berthed was unattended and the gate locked, but from the height of the Strider’s carriage, Sam found he could easily step onto the broad top of the plascrete wall surrounding the lot and from there it was a short jump onto the steam-truck’s deck.

  “The gate’s locked,” Young bristled as Sam stepped across the gap and onto the plascrete.

  “I’ll pay for all the damages,” Sam acknowledged. He paced to his left, looking for the shortest possible jump.

  “Wait for me,” Young barked, and scrambled after him. On the wall, he straightened his jacket and nodded to the Strider’s pilot. “No offense, Private Ramirez. Your skills are impeccable, I’m sure, but the ride is a little bumpy.”

  The Striderman saluted, and Rockwell and Jed Coltrane followed Brigham Young up onto the wall.

  “Shall we lead the way dowd to the Liod House?” Absalom Fearnley-Standish called from the other Strider.

  Sam looked at the exhaust pipe and saw, of course, no smoke. “It’ll take us a few minutes to get her going!” he called. “Keep an eye on the street!”

  He jumped down to the metal deck of his craft, landing softly on his rubber soles and rolling forward on bent knees. He had spirits in the galley that would get the fire started quickly, but of course the fire would take time to heat the boiler and build up enough steam to move the Jim Smiley’s tyres.

  Which was why Sam had had the Smiley built with a special emergency starter, an electricks device the engineers had built to his specifications that basically hurled lightning bolts through the boiler to superheat its contents in just a few seconds. He flicked the switch on in the wheelhouse, hearing two heavy thuds on the deck behind him as he did so, and headed below decks as the dwarf Coltrane dropped onto the Jim Smiley with a tumbling flip, landing on his feet without a sound.

  Sam heard the electricks of the emergency starter hum as he hit the engine room. He checked the water levels, saw the rising pressure gauge with satisfaction, and was happy that the Danites weren’t as sabotage-minded as Captain Richard Burton. He was even happier that he’d talked the United States Army into equipping the Jim Smiley with the biggest electric battery on wheels in North America, if not the world. It would take a week of normal driving to recharge, but this was exactly the sort of emergency he’d in mind. Well, maybe not exactly.

  He ducked into the galley for a bottle of something flammable and a fistful of cigars.

  Coltrane trotted down the stairs as Sam threw a bottle of high-proof whisky into the furnace. The little man rolled up his sleeves and nodded.

  “I shoveled a lotta elephant shit,” he said. “I figure I can shovel coal.”

  “It might make a nice change,” Sam agreed, biting on his Partagás with a sense of cosmic relief. He handed the dwarf a cigar too, struck a match, lit Coltrane’s smoke, and then tossed the match into the furnace.

  Poof!

  Sam checked the pressure gauge again. “Here we go,” he told Coltrane, and headed up to the wheelhouse. “Join us when the furnace is full.”

  Sam gestured at the co-pilot’s chair inside the wheelhouse but Rockwell and Young both declined to sit. He happily released the brake and put the Jim Smiley into gear, backing away from the parking lot gate in order to have as much of a run at it as possible.

  He wasn’t sure, but he thought the gunshots sounded closer.

  KRANG-NG-NG-NG!

  The piles of coal in the boiler room’s boxes jumped like popping corn in the pan and Jed tumbled to the hard metal floor.

  “Ouch. You’re getting old, Coltrane,” he muttered to himself, rubbing a bruised elbow as he stood back up. He shoveled coal into the boiler until it wouldn’t take any more, then he shut the grate, jammed the shovel into a convenient coal box, and headed back up the stairs to the deck.

  He heard
trouble brewing in the gunshots and he patted the vibro-blade at his belt to reassure himself.

  The Jim Smiley rolled down the empty streets of the Great Salt Lake City. Jed emerged from below decks facing backward and saw one of the two Mexican Striders bringing up the rear of the little procession. They seemed to be slowing down, and so did Sam Clemens’s steam-truck.

  Jed turned around. Ahead he saw the curving lower side of the big egg-shaped Tabernacle and the other Strider leading the way. Absalom Fearnley-Standish and his girlfriend rode in it and as Jed looked at him the Englishman took off his mutilated hat and waved it back in salute.

  Beyond Fearnley-Standish, around the base of the egg, Jed saw war. He moved forward into the wheelhouse to see it better.

  A large brick building of some kind, like a storefront, faced the Tabernacle. Twin rows of three-foot-high brass letters decorated its façade, one in the strange Mormon gobbledygook they called Deseret and the other in English, reading ZIONS COOPERATIVE MERCANTILE INSTITUTE.

  Most of the windows had been shot out of the front of the building, leaving the street littered with glass and fragments of wood, and bodies, in both blue and gray uniforms. A flag Jed didn’t recognize flew over the battered Institute, blue and gold and showing an Indian holding a bow and a single white star. Men in blue uniforms crouched inside, showing themselves only to fire carbines at their besiegers.

  The soldiers outside the Institute wore gray. They advanced in ranks upon the men in blue, crouching behind Franklin Poles and carriages and creeping up in tandem with their metallic clocksprung horses, the horses shuffling low to the ground in postures impossible to flesh and blood animals, providing their riders cover with their heavy gleaming bodies.

  “There, Mr. Clemens,” Brigham Young said. “There is your commerce.”

 

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