by D. J. Butler
“They’re not shooting at your people,” Sam Clemens said. “They’re shooting at each other.” He shifted the steam-truck into neutral gear and eased down on the brake handle until the Jim Smiley rolled to a halt. “But where to?”
The front Strider clanked alongside the steam-truck, and Fearnley-Standish waved his hat again. Annie Web, beside him on the rumble seat, looked dressed for a picnic or a dance but held a long rifle across her lap. “Chadge of plads, gedts?” he called.
“It’s all death, just the same.” Young stared at the gun battle. “And they’re blocking our access.”
Jed looked again, and realized it was true. The men in gray were fighting from the Lion House, and a number of them crouched in its bushes and behind its walls, and even inside the building, shooting out of its windows.
“They’re probably wearing fornication pants, too,” Sam Clemens quipped, and he winked at Jed.
“We need to get the message out that I’m still alive,” Young said.
“And that I’m innocent,” Clemens added.
Fearnley-Standish nodded. He looked very serious, almost like he was posing for a daguerreotype.
“That’s the place to do it from.” Young jabbed his finger, pointing at the Lion House. “George Cannon always has one of his clerks sleep in the message room on a cot, in case we need to send out instructions or an announcement in the middle of the night. We need to get in there, wake that clerk up, and announce to the Kingdom what’s been going on.”
“Do problem!” Fearnley-Standish leaned forward and said something to his pilot, and the Strider lurched into motion again, heading straight for the fracas.
“Fool!” Clemens snapped. He put the Jim Smiley into reverse, wheeling it around in the street and narrowly avoiding colliding with the second Strider. Ramirez made the vehicle chicken-walk backward in the nick of time, and then Clemens had the steam-truck rolling the other direction, crashing over the curb onto a sidewalk and shearing a couple of saplings into toothpicks.
Jed rushed across the deck to the back end of the truck and stood beside the big paddlewheel’s casing to watch the action.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The Striderman at the gun controls—Jackson, the woman—fired on the soldiers in gray. Her aim was deadly; two of the clocksprung horses exploded, rocketing into the air and collapsing into metal shavings as they were hit, one taking its rider with it. The third shot plowed a furrow in the glittering plascrete sidewalk at the feet of two soldiers.
Every gray-capped head turned and looked at the intruders.
Ramirez moved his Strider into a support position, Polk firing past the lead Strider and blasting craters in the street.
Boom! Boom!
Jed wondered where all the Mormons were. He’d seen them in the daytime, every one of them, it seemed, armed to the teeth. Why were none of them on the scene now, assisting one side or the other, or trying to quiet the fight? The one or two people on the street not in uniform that Jed spotted were in the corners, scurrying for cover.
Maybe the conflict was just too big. Or maybe they’d been ordered to stand down.
Then every gray soldier who could manage turned where he stood, crouched, or lay and began firing at the Striders.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Ramirez and Ortiz whipped their vehicles around in the storm of bullets and the grays began to leap into the saddle.
Rockwell jumped to the back rail with Jed, raised a pair of long Colt pistols, and fired at the secessionist Virginians.
“Left!” Jed heard Brigham Young yell. “We can get around to North Tabernacle and get in through the Beehive House!”
The Striders split left and right. Ramirez and Polk vanished between tall brick warehouses, and Ortiz and his company ducked as his Strider jumped in long goose-like steps down a ramp that led underground. Clocksprung-mounted riders turned and followed each Strider, drawing the bulk of the force away.
Other cavalrymen, a dozen of them, kept after the Jim Smiley.
Rat-a-tat-tat-a-tat-tat went their hooves on the street, sounding altogether too much like John Browning’s machine-gun for Jed’s comfort.
“We have company!” Rockwell yelled. He anchored his hips against the railing of the steam-truck and leaned into each shot he took, stealing every inch of range he could, heedless of the shots that came back his direction.
Jed wished he had a gun and tightened his grip on the hilt of the vibro-blade.
The Jim Smiley raced forward the length of another city block, the six riders behind closing.
“Into the wheelhouse!” Sam Clemens barked over his shoulder. Jed obeyed.
“No bullet or blade!” Rockwell shouted his defiance, reloading at the rail in a swarm of hot lead.
“Now, dammit!” Clemens shouted, and the mountain man reluctantly came forward and joined the others at the wheel.
Clemens snapped his fingers to catch Jed’s attention, and pointed at a switch on the control panel. It had a small symbol like a lightning bolt engraved in the metal next to it, and a keyhole. Clemens took a key from around his neck, inserted it, and turned the key. Nothing obvious happened.
“When I light my cigar, flip this switch,” Clemens said to him. “When I light the cigar, and not before. Got it?”
“Sure,” Coltrane said. “Is that a weapon?”
Clemens grinned and pulled a fresh cigar from his pocket. “It’s the brake on the Ikey Heyman,” he said. “The rest of you, stay in the wheelhouse, no matter what, and don’t touch the walls.”
Coltrane didn’t know what Clemens meant, and didn’t know what to expect. Just to be prepared, he drew the vibro-blade and put his thumb on the switch.
Rat-a-tat-tat-a-tat-tat, the men in gray drew nearer.
Sam yanked on the brake handle and the Jim Smiley shuddered to a halt in the middle of the street. “When I light my cigar,” he repeated. “Don’t touch the walls. And don’t shoot! Guns always mess everything up.”
Sam Clemens walked out onto the deck of his steam-truck and waited, cigar in one hand and match in the other.
“My guns?” Rockwell looked at Brigham Young like a kicked dog.
“Do it.”
“He’s crazy,” Rockwell muttered, but he holstered his pistols.
“Don’t shoot me or nothing,” Jed contradicted the mountain man, “but I think he might jest be the least crazy man on this truck.”
The cavalrymen dismounted. Sam Clemens held his hands by his chest in plain sight, and the men in uniform swarmed up the sides of the vessel. They looked angry and they rushed up the Jim Smiley’s two ladders holding nothing back, with murder in their eyes.
Clemens stood calm and smiling, like he was out at the fair, having a nice day of it. He looked as happy, Jed thought, as any shill ever had. Jed himself felt very uncertain, and shifted from foot to foot on the black rubber that matted the floor of the wheelhouse.
“You, there!” demanded one of the grays, a young man who appeared to be in charge. “Who are you?”
Soldiers rushed towards the wheelhouse. The last of the cavalrymen jumped onto the bottom rungs of the ladder. Sam Clemens struck the match slowly and deliberately on the rivets of his fornication pants and held the little flame to the tip of his cigar.
Jed flipped the switch.
Crack-ckz-ckz-ckz-ckz-ckz-ckz!
***
Chapter Seventeen
Burton propped Edgar Allan Poe up in his lap and dabbed blood away from the other man’s face. The American had been beaten badly. Under the bruises and cuts, he was pale as chalk, his face sweated, and he trembled with each breath.
Poe was dying.
“I’d put the hypocephalus under your head,” Burton joked, “but it’s flat, and would give you no comfort. The Egyptians made lousy pillows.” He knew Poe had it worse than he did, but he hurt, too, arm, leg, and chest. He hadn’t been in this much sheer physical pain since the night he had a spear thrust through his face.
He grinned with
pride at the memory.
Poe twisted his face into something that resembled a smile. “Putting a cloth … under a man’s head … doesn’t make it a pillow,” he gasped, “any more than putting a man in a stable … makes him a horse.” He coughed hard and flopped his head to one side to spit more of his life onto the floor.
Burton chuckled. “I’m willing to admit we don’t know what the hypocephalus was for and call it a draw if you are,” he offered. “I’d love to borrow your specimen and take it back to London with me. You could come lecture on it for the Royal Geographical Society. We could debate the issue again.”
“It’s a fabrication,” Poe croaked.
Burton laughed. “You Americans. Not enough antiquities of your own, so you fake them!”
“Not every country has an Empire full of ruins to ransack,” Poe said, and then collapsed into bloody wet coughing again.
“You gents are awfully fookin’ jolly for men about to die,” the Irishman O’Shaughnessy complained. He sat slumped against the plascrete wall, beak-like nose protruding between his bony knees.
The room they were in was long and cold. It was windowless and devoid of furniture other than two long tables in the center, with benches affixed to either side. Burton guessed it was something in the nature of a mess hall, and he sat cradling Poe on the table while the woman Roxie examined the room’s only door. The door was a single slab of plascrete, featureless as far as Burton could see.
“Is any other response appropriate in a man?” Burton wanted to know, puffing out his chest.
“I reckon not.” O’Shaughnessy slumped.
“I don’t know how the door is locked,” Roxie said, “but it’s done from the outside. Maybe it’s barred, I didn’t notice on the way in. But it won’t budge, and there isn’t so much as a keyhole, doorknob, or hinge showing on this side of the door.”
Poe groped feebly at his jacket with both hands. “Help me sit up,” he mumbled.
Burton pulled the other man to a sitting position and stayed next to him, an arm around his shoulders. Poe fumbled into a coat pocket and produced a folded yellowing cloth. He opened it, and Burton saw the circles, figures with raised arms and animal heads that marked this as Poe’s hypocephalus. He put his hand over it to restrain Poe.
“Keep it,” he said. “The Society isn’t going to be interested in a fake.”
Poe shook his head, weak but impatient. “Weapon,” he said. “It’s a weapon.”
“Is it an explosive?” O’Shaughnessy asked. “If it blows up like dynamite, that and the kiss of fortune from sainted Brigit might just get us through this door.”
Poe looked slowly around the room. “Hypnotic,” he said slowly, and shook his head. “No good, no good.”
Burton wondered if the other man were delirious. He had seemed lucid before, though battered and weak, but men often lost their reason in their final moments. Roxie turned away from the door with a look of devastation on her, Burton now saw, rather plain, angular face, and he wished he had some way to shield her from Poe’s imminent death. Not that she was a wilting flower and needed protection, but because that was what a civilized man did for women. As if to belie his thoughts, Roxie crossed the room and gathered Poe in her arms, taking him from Burton almost by force.
“And what if it did do some good?” O’Shaughnessy demanded morosely. “What if we could get out of this hole? Would it matter? What are we doing, anyway?”
“Are you serious?” Burton snorted, rising to his feet. “Varuna’s saddled seal, man, we’re trying to save all our countries from disaster!”
“Oh, yeah?” the Irishman grimaced. “You’re trying to save the English mill owners, aren’t you? That’s your cause, Burton, remember? Queen and country! Remind me again what you’re doing for the poor suffering Irish.”
“Yes, you bloody-minded idiot, I’m trying to help the Irish!” Burton meant to keep his temper, but found himself roaring. “If the United States splits into two, how many Irishmen do you think will fight and die on each side?”
O’Shaughnessy shrugged and looked away.
“And how many Irishmen will fight in Britain’s armies and navies when she invades in support of her ally?” Burton wanted to pummel the other man in the face to make his point, but he controlled himself at least that much. “The only thing your country exports is its people—how many Irishmen do you think will die torn to shred by guns? How many will sink in burning ships? How many will die of infection in freezing, mud-floored camp hospitals?”
“More than one,” O’Shaughnessy admitted sourly.
“More than one!” Burton bellowed. “Then for the sake of those more than one Irishmen, you whimpering sot, not to mention for the sake of your own wretched life, do you think you can be troubled to bestir yourself to help us escape?”
The Irishman leaned forward and vomited on both their shoes.
“Surya’s golden arms!” Burton shouted. In rage, he kicked the plascrete wall, right beside O’Shaughnessy’s head.
“I’ll help, I’ll bloody-damn-hell help!” the Irishman gasped. He staggered to his feet, propping himself against the wall with his shoulder blades. “I don’t really have a choice, do I, unless I want to just lie down and die. Only I don’t see what the point of my help would be. I haven’t got dynamite or a drill, or the tiny brass beetles, or anything else. But if you want me to run and smash my own fookin’ head against the door over and over again until it breaks or I do, I will.”
The exaggerated, desperate glare in the man’s eyes, the tangled thatch of red hair, and the drips of vomit on his chin made Burton laugh.
“You’re right!” he surrendered, throwing up his useless hands. “There’s nothing we can do! We’re trapped!” He pointed at the door that penned them in and wagged his finger at it, as if scolding the architecture. “That door has us buried in here as effectively as any avalanche. But sooner or later Pratt’s men will open the door and we owe it to ourselves and our various countrymen to be ready to take action when they do.”
“Unless they just want to starve us to death,” O’Shaughnessy muttered.
“What kind of action, Dick?” Roxie asked.
Burton ran both hands through his hair and tweaked his own mustachios. “What weapons do we have, other than fists?” he asked.
Roxie shook her head. “Nothing.”
“I’ve got a knife,” the Irishman admitted, looking down at his bile-spattered shoes.
“A knife?” Burton was impressed. “How did the Pinkertons fail to find a knife on your person?”
Tamerlane O’Shaughnessy grinned. “The Pinkertons failed,” he said—
—and snapped his hand forward in a quick gesture, like he aggressively wanted to shake hands—
—Snick!—
—and a knife blade popped from his sleeve and filled his hand. “Because they’re born idjits and then the Agency trains them to be even stupider.”
“I accept your analysis,” Burton harrumphed. “That knife blade won’t get us through the door, so we’ll need to make a plan. Poe’s manifest unwellness should allow him to distract at least one man.” Burton gestured around the room, like it was a chalkboard and he was sketching out a plan of battle. “Obviously, you’ll want to attack your man here inside the room, with the possibility of luring more men in. If I position myself beside the door, I should be able to take advantage of the commotion and get behind our enemy.”
“No need,” Poe groaned. He waved Roxie away and climbed gingerly down off the table, setting each foot on the floor like he was sticking it into a pot of boiling tar.
“Will your hypocephalus do something besides hypnotize a man, then?” Burton asked gruffly. He found that he felt protective of Edgar Allan Poe, and wanted the man to lie back down and rest.
“Better,” Poe said. With a hand that shook like a falling autumn leaf, he reached inside his shirt and pulled out a long, thin, silver whistle.
K-k-k-k-k-RANG-ng-ngchhhhhhhhhh!
The
Strider’s gigantic chicken-like feet slammed onto the plascrete ramp down and planted. The Strider wobbled, but under Ortiz’s expert hands it kept its balance and slid forward, like a child on ice skates, unsteady but upright. Sparks flew up in sheets from where the metal scratched the plascrete.
“Get dowd!” Absalom yelled, and followed his own advice.
Ortiz heard him too, or already saw the ceiling coming on his own, and the Strider dropped into a crouch as it passed underground and into the warren of parking bays that surrounded the Tabernacle. Absalom cringed but the plascrete slid by safely several feet over his head.
Master Sergeant Jackson never ducked. As the Strider turned to scuttle underground, she swiveled widdershins, keeping her assortment of guns aimed at the clocksprung cavalry on their heels. As they descended, she adjusted her aim up to compensate and fired.
Boom! Boom! Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
One metal horse exploded into flame in the barrage. Its companions swerved aside or balked, buying seconds that might become precious. Absalom took aim with his Danite-pilfered pistol and fired off a single shot.
The Strider turned a corner and the horses were out of sight before Absalom could see if his shot hit anything. He cocked, steadied his aim and waited, watching parked steam-trucks and plascrete pylons rush past out of the corner of his eye. The blue light from the electricks globes in the ceilings and in the walls flickered but provided plenty of illumination for gunplay.
Three clocksprung cavalrymen clattered down into the hangar bay. Absalom exhaled gently and squeezed the trigger again and again, imagining a clay pigeon flying directly away from him and into the chest of the lead rider.
Five shots rang out in quick succession and the soldier tumbled off his horse.
Absalom sat back, took his powder flask from the pocket of his coat and set about reloading.
“Stay down!” sweet Annie Webb urged him, pulling gently at his shoulder and trying to drag him low into the carriage. Absalom only grinned recklessly at her and began thumbing lead balls into the pistol’s cylinder.
Boom! Boom!
Consuelo Jackson fired her big gun. Shattered lights exploded and chunks of plascrete tore from their place and scattered across the floor.
