by D. J. Butler
Instantly, the sparks stopped and the cavalrymen lay still. Sam smelled ozone and gunpowder and burnt flesh. “I hope they aren’t dead,” he said, looking around himself at all the fallen men, “but either way, we need to get them off the deck.”
Upon inspection, though some were burned severely, none of the cavalrymen turned out to be dead. They thudded as they were trundled off the steam-truck and hit the ground below. Sam would have preferred a gentler treatment of the unconscious men but, after all, they had been trying to kill him, and he had saved their lives, or at least some of their lives, by keeping Rockwell in check. Really, they owed Sam a debt of thanks, and one that they would never acknowledge, so on balance he didn’t feel too bad.
“Should we take their horses?” Rockwell asked, staring at the burnished metal beasts. “If they were … uh …”
“Meat?” Sam suggested.
“Flesh,” Brigham Young growled.
“Alive,” Rockwell agreed, “I’d take ’em.”
“Do you know how to operate one of those machines?” Sam asked the mountain man.
“No.”
“Then now’s not the time,” Young decreed, and resettled himself in the wheelhouse.
Sam took the wheel again.
“You’ve got good timing,” he said to Coltrane. “You’d be a good mate on a steam-truck.”
“Yeah?” The dwarf kept running his eyes around the streets, expressing a nervousness Sam felt.
Sam released the brake and the Jim Smiley rolled forward. “I might be looking for a mate after this is all over.”
“You’re the second steam-truck man to offer me a job tonight.” Coltrane scratched the stubble on his jaw. “I ain’t used to this much favorable attention.”
“Would it feel more comfortable if I rode you out of town on a rail first?” Sam quipped, turning the truck back in the direction of the Beehive House. “I could demand a bribe, shut you down anyway, rough you up, and then warn you never to come back. Would that make you feel at home?”
Coltrane chuckled. “Yeah, it would. You ever worked as a carny, Clemens?”
“Call me Sam. No, my heart was always on the river. But I’ve never turned down a good show and it’s hard to get a better show than a carnival.” He sucked at a cigar and offered another to the short man. “Just have to avoid the gaffed games. Of course, even the rigged games are part of the show.”
“Damn straight,” Coltrane agreed, and took the cigar. “And call me Jed. But I don’t figure you for a fellow who gets hoodwinked much.”
“I’m certainly a fellow who does his best to avoid it,” Sam agreed. “That doesn’t stop the hoodwinkers from trying.”
The edge of the Beehive House rolled into view and Sam braked the Jim Smiley. Shooting continued on the far side of Young’s two conjoined houses, but it was more sporadic now. “Is it worth me driving the truck somewhere else to draw off attention?” he asked. “Or hiding it?”
Brigham Young smiled fiercely. He looked an awful lot like a heavier, Yankee version of Richard Burton, Sam thought. Minus the scars on the sides of the head and plus approximately fifty wives. “Not worth it, Mr. Clemens,” Young said. “In fifteen minutes we’ll have sent our message and it will be too late to stop us. Everyone will know that I’m alive, you’re innocent, and John D. Lee is a scoundrel.”
“I could drive the Jim Smiley across the yard,” Sam offered. “Crash it right into the window of the message room.”
“There are still men fighting over there,” Young said, sounding grumpy even at the suggestion. “This is my house, Clemens, with my family inside. We’ll just walk through. If anyone tries to resist, my family will help us. Besides,” he hefted a pair of pistols he’d taken from electrocuted cavalrymen, “we’re armed.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Sam agreed.
They crossed the north lawn of the Beehive House with guns in hand, other than the dwarf, who carried a big vibro-blade, thumb on the switch. A man with a long coat and rifle stood on the porch, and Brigham Young walked straight up to him and leveled both pistols at his chest.
“Welker, isn’t it?” he asked.
“President Young!” the man gasped. He was barrel-chested and tall despite short legs and Sam thought he looked like he ate surprisingly well for a man who lived on the frontier. “You’re not dead!”
“Are you with me or Lee?” Young asked, cocking his guns. Sam looked around the porch, half-expecting to be spied on. Coltrane must be sharing his suspicions, he thought; the dwarf looked itchy.
Welker promptly turned his rifle around and handed it to Young, stock-first. “I’m your man, President Young,” he said. He turned and knocked three times at the door. “Thank God you’re back.” He opened the door, revealing a parlor lit only dimly by electricks turned down low.
“Not everyone!” Young snapped. He uncocked one pistol, stuck it into the waistband of his pants, and handed Welker’s rifle back to him. Just in case, Sam cocked his own guns and kept an eye on the guard.
Welker nodded and stepped aside, and Young stomped into his home. Rockwell snatched back Welker’s gun and pushed himself into the man’s face.
“You’re coming with us,” he growled. Welker backed away, nodded, and followed Brigham Young.
The chairs and sofas in the parlor were very nice, and the room was empty of life.
“Why did you knock, Welker?” Sam asked. “Everyone’s asleep.”
Welker hesitated, then shrugged. “Manners,” he said. “It isn’t my house.”
“People knock on doors before entering in the Kingdom of Deseret, Mr. Clemens,” Young growled. “For my bodyguards, it’s protocol.”
“Yes, but he didn’t enter, did he?” Sam pointed out. “And this is your house, isn’t it, Mr. President?”
“In ten minutes it won’t matter,” Young said, barreling through the parlor and down a long hall. “In ten minutes they’ll be able to shoot me dead and it still won’t matter. Lee will be held accountable and the Kingdom will avoid entering this ridiculous war.”
The long hall was lined with doors, all of them shut. Sam wondered what time it was and guessed the hour must be nearing six in the morning. If this were a farm, everyone would be up by now.
One door opened in the hall, directly in front of them, and a young woman appeared in it. She wore a long white nightgown that covered everything but her head and hands, but Sam still blushed and looked away, out of habit.
“Father!” the young woman gasped, and threw herself on the gruff President’s arm.
“Get inside your room, Elizabeth,” he harrumphed at her.
“But …”
“I’ll explain at breakfast.”
She looked at Sam Clemens and Welker and Rockwell and the midget Coltrane and their bristling guns, and hesitated. She was a slightly-better-than-plain-looking girl, Sam thought, strong enough to be some frontiersman’s wife, and fair enough to have her pick of such rough men. Here she’d probably end up as one of a trio of girls on the elbow of some toothless, doddering old fart. She met his gaze and he blushed again and looked away, feeling vaguely embarrassed.
“Do you need help, father?” Elizabeth asked.
“The day I need help from one of my daughters,” Young snapped, “is a dark day indeed for the Kingdom of Deseret!”
He moved on, Sam followed, and they left Elizabeth behind them.
They passed a window and then another, looking out onto the orchard between Young’s houses and the Tabernacle, and then Coltrane tagged at Sam’s sleeve. “Something’s wrong,” he muttered.
Sam looked out at the orchard. Other than the flare of gunshots off to the left, by the Mercantile, it was still and quiet, but for a faint wheezing and pumping sound. “Those glass bells,” he agreed. “The pumps, or whatever they are. They’re still working. Should they be stopped for the night?”
“I ain’t sure that matters, but I figure it might.”
“I think they might be pneumatics,” Sam pondered.
“I ain’t sure,” Coltrane scratched his head slowly, “but I reckon you must mean either rheumatic, or pneumon … pneumonic? Pneumoneristic? You mean they’re sick? There’s something wrong with them?”
“I mean they’re pumps to create pressure. I think it’s good they’re still going, because the message system will work.”
“I don’t trust Welker.”
“I don’t either.” Sam considered. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Jed, but I calculate that you might be a touch more inconspicuous than I would be, if you were to go missing from the party here.”
“Is there a right way to take that?” Coltrane grinned. “But I agree.”
The dwarf jogged back down the hall the way they had come and disappeared. Sam hurried and caught up to the others. They were in the Lion House end of the two buildings, now, by the crenellated entrance through which Sam had originally come. Shattered windows and bullets in the plaster of the walls bore witness to the Third Virginia’s using the room in their gun battle. Outside, gunfire still flashed and shoes echoed.
Young hammered at the door of George Cannon’s communication room with the butt of one pistol.
“Go away!” called a voice, faint through the door.
“Is that Lindemuth?” Young roared. “Open up, you maggot!”
“Is that…? Who’s there?” Lindemuth called, the door still shut.
“Open up!” Young bellowed. “Or I’ll seal you for time and all eternity to every fat, man-hating shrew in the Kingdom!”
“President Young?”
“I’ll seal you to a man, Lindemuth! I’ll kill two birds with one stone and seal you to John Lee himself!”
Sam elbowed his way past Welker and Rockwell and raised one of his pistols. “With all due respect, Mr. President, I worry we may not be able to wait.”
Bang!
The action of the pistol felt alien in Sam’s hand, but the resulting progress was satisfying. Sam’s bullet blew both the lock and doorknob off the door and kicked the door open, revealing a thin man in suspenders and a knotted tie cowering at the message table. Behind him gleamed the brass trap doors over the bank of circular glass cubbyholes that Sam remembered from only the day before.
Young glared at Sam fiercely. “Thank you,” he said, without softening his expression. He turned and barreled through the door. “Lindemuth!” he barked. “Pens and ink and a stack of blank message slips!”
The clerk scurried to comply and Young shoved aside papers on the room’s central table, clearing the entire space.
“I trust you gentlemen all know how to write?” Young asked, shrugging out of his jacket and rolling up his sleeves.
“So long as the writing’s short,” Rockwell said.
“I’d have said the same,” Sam agreed. “But it would have been funnier.”
“‘I am alive and John Lee is a traitor’,” Young dictated. “I trust that’s short enough.” He grabbed a pen and bottle of ink and stationed himself at the end of the table. “I will sign my name to each. Lindemuth will shove them into the message transmitter as fast as we can create them.”
***
Chapter Eighteen
Jed Coltrane slipped out a window. It was easier than trying to find a door; he just tipped up a big pane and crouched in it like a gargoyle for a minute, checking his exit route. Outside the Lion House, or the Beehive House, whichever it was he was now leaving, a man in a long coat paced in the bushes, rifle in both hands. He looked too alert to be a casual sentry—the man had obviously been warned to expect something.
Jed’s uneasy sense that he was playing a gaffed game ratcheted up a notch. He was in deep shadow, invisible to the guard (who was watching for people breaking in, anyway, and not for people trying to break out), so he waited.
When the man passed, Jed jumped onto his back with the piano wire looped between his fists.
The man fired his rifle twice, but he couldn’t get it swiveled around tightly enough to get a good shot at Jed. The sound of his shots was lost in the general firefight noise, and then he was collapsing on the green grass, unconscious.
You really ought to cut the bastard’s throat, Coltrane, Jed told himself, but hell, the guy might have family, so he didn’t. He put the wire back into his pocket and crept out into the park to reconnoiter. The bellows inside the glass bells still pumped up and down, but unlike in the daytime, nothing whizzed through the glass tubes overhead. He wondered what the bellows did—maybe they circulated the air inside the Tabernacle or powered the electricks? Poe would have a good guess.
Of course, if he kept coughing up blood like he had been last time Jed had seen him, Poe might not live long enough to ever see the bellows.
The area outside Brigham Young’s twin houses was well lit by a series of Franklin Poles running up South Tabernacle and North Tabernacle, as well as Poles dotting the open park space. Ahead of Jed was the Tabernacle, the gigantic plascrete egg that seemed to be the center of the Kingdom of Deseret. Faint lights shone through its glass doors, lights that flickered a bit, if Jed was not mistaken, and were yellow. It was almost like the enormous building might be on fire.
Off to his left, Jed saw the ZIONS COOPERATIVE MERCANTILE INSTITUTE building and the gunfight that enveloped it. Men in gray on clocksprung horses were leaping in through the front doors and windows now, shattering glass and splintering wood as they went. He didn’t see any of the Massachusetts soldiers in blue, and guessed they must be running away, out the back doors of the building.
If they weren’t being outright massacred on the inside.
Jed felt very nervous, and armed himself with the vibro-blade. He didn’t know how much of a charge the weapon’s electricks carried, but as long as the juice lasted he’d be able to cut through just about anything.
To his right, where North Tabernacle Street crossed along the edge of the glass bellows park, the Jim Smiley idled on the grass, in the shadow of a couple of big cottonwoods. Her lights were all off but Jed knew just where to look and could make out a wispy plume of steam and smoke trickling out through the trees’ interlaced leaves. It was like some kind of Indian trick Clemens had pulled, making sure the truck’s vapors were sifted by leaves before they went up into the open sky, and Jed admired him for it. It might not be a bad life, being mate aboard the Jim Smiley.
Clocksprung horses moved into view. Six … seven … eight of them, Jed counted, and there were real live horses, too, and men mounted on them. They passed the Jim Smiley, without seeming to notice the big steam-truck, and trotted to the first of the glass bells.
One of the men on horseback raised his arm, and the clocksprung riders urged their mounts forward—
—Crash! Crash! Crash!—
—shattering the bells.
“Jebus,” Jed muttered. He crept through the trees along the side of the Beehive House for a better look. Why were the soldiers and Danites (if that’s who the other men were, but hell, every man he met seemed to be one) smashing up the bellows? They did it roughly, too, not like rousties sloughing the show to move on to the next town, but like cops letting you know that you hadn’t paid them enough and you’d reach a little bit deeper into your kitty if you wanted to play in their town.
Jed growled involuntarily and tightened his grip on the Colt vibro-blade.
Without meaning to, he realized he had come all the way to the side of the Jim Smiley. He hadn’t meant to—he’d intended to creep back the other way, to watch what happened to Sam Clemens and the others, make sure they weren’t walking into an ambush—but the action had been irresistible.
He turned to head back the other way and across the park, the Tabernacle’s doors burst open.
Three figures stumbled out, drawing with them huge puffing clouds of smoke and the orange tongues of hungry fire. From the top hat of the central silhouette, the poofy skirt of the one on the right, and the queer Striderman getup of the third, Jed immediately recognized Absalom Fearnley-Standish and his angels. The Strider gunner (he
could tell her body from Ortiz’s a mile away) carried a bundle of bulky things in her arms, like short poles.
“What happened to the Strider, then?” he muttered to himself.
The horsemen in the garden stopped, saw Jed’s three allies, and immediately opened fire. Clutching his hat, Fearnley-Standish turned and dashed back into the burning building, coattails flapping. He and the two women hid inside the door, drew pistols, and began firing out. The horsemen took cover, behind park benches, trees, and the clocksprung horses themselves.
Jed looked left, to where he knew Sam Clemens and the others had gone. Who knew what was happening to them now? Jed had basically abandoned his post, and they might be prisoners or dead.
On the other hand, maybe Welker was totally trustworthy and they were just fine. The fact that he and Sam Clemens had had the same hunch didn’t mean the hunch was correct. Young had been confident in Welker and confident that he was about to get his message out and turn the tables on the Danite insurrection. And if someone didn’t step in to help Absalom Fearnley-Standish and the two women pronto, they would be roasted alive or pumped full of lead.
Jed climbed the ladder of the Jim Smiley, up over the huge India rubber skirt, across the metal deck, and onto the rubber matting on the floor of the wheelhouse. He had watched Clemens operate the machine, and it had been no big deal—gear, wheel, and brake, Jed could manage. And he knew the furnace was full of coal.
Jed sighted down over the front of the steam-truck at the fifteen or so men whose backs were turned to him, shooting at his allies. He needed a way to get them all, or as many as he possibly could, and hand-to-hand fighting was not going to do the trick, not even with his Colt blade.
But the Jim Smiley might—Jed started to laugh when he saw that Sam had left in its place the lightning bolt key, the one that had activated the steam-truck’s defensive electricks. Jed flicked on the lightning bolt switch, electrifying the vehicle. Sparks crackzed off the deck and hull of the craft where stray hanging Cottonwood branches touched it, and one of the trees caught fire. Jed released the brake, shifted the steam-truck into gear, and rolled forward.
