Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution

by Ann Vandermeer (ed)

  In the end, I was so charmed by the ceremony—not to mention the sight of Beatrix’s many silk-and-tulle-wrapped arms and tentacles arcing up out of the black and depthless waters of the Portsmouth Mine Pit to grip David’s puny human paws in deathless and dreamless matrimony, a sight whose inherent beauty was only amplified by the 72 mint juleps I had already imbibed that afternoon—that I inadvertently agreed to aid in the promotion of the groom’s father’s burgeoning discount dry-goods business. The next morning, as I nursed my swollen and aching headsac, it dawned upon me that Dayton may have mistaken me for a more famous relation of mine—having seen snapshots from the event (to which I had chosen to wear the new copper-and-iron surface-walking suit that I had come to that municipality to fetch), I must confess that I did cut a handsome mien: The westering sun gleaming on my suit’s crystalline dome and brass pressure-fittings, the gouts of steam and smoke billowing from my dual-exhaust ports, the scythe-ish curves and gleaming serrations of the primary-manipulator claws—it was far from shocking that a noted Midwestern businessman might have mistook me for a Deathless Dreamer with deep pockets and noted leverage in local and state government.

  In any event, I had presumed that the dissolution of this marriage four years later relieved me of my obligations to George Dayton and the corporate entity that ultimately inherited his personhood, soul, and vast, mechanized subterranean estate following Dayton’s exeunt from this material plane in 1938. Sadly, my lawyers inform me that I was mistaken. And so—despite a busy schedule, which included writing and revising my weekly advice column, among other personal and professional obligations—I found myself hanging in a blue and cloudless sky, ensconced in my finest mechanical velocitating suit, dangling below a red-and-white montgolfière and above the scintillant waters of our own Detroit River, so that promotional “B-roll” might be shot for some upcoming commercial advertisements to be televised during a much ballyhooed event in which grown men of mixed race fight for the skin of a pig in order that one might rise to the rank of President of these as-of-yet-still United States.

  Then, without warning and despite assurances to the contrary by both the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, violent thunderheads rolled in from the suburbs, blotting out the sun, and whipping me and my lighter-than-aircraft first out of frame, and then entirely out of the region.

  I was buffeted and beaten by the savage winds, draggéd through the peaks of uncooperative pines, harrowed by scavangerous birds, and ultimately suffered a precipitous descent after a clutch of nefarious robins loosed and absconded with a large portion of the stitching securing the deflation port of my balloon’s envelope. Fortunately, my acceleration was retarded when the sagging silk snagged upon the spire of a great, sooty, jackstraw building. Perhaps some disused factory or abandoned Rust-Belt fortification? was my brief thought as I considered the gothic architectural flourishes and occluded crenellations—that is, prior to my velocitating suit swinging forcefully into the edifice’s roughhewn brick walls, at which time I lost all sense for an undetermined period.

  When I awoke I found myself here, presumably within the great and terrible confines of that building, rudely stripped of my modern (and quite comfortable) land-walking velocitating suit, and deposited in a tiled tank—perhaps a mid-sized swimming pool, or a bathtub formerly tenanted by William Howard Taft (who, as I recall, was likewise a cousin of Beatrix, but not mine—although I can no longer claim to recollect the tortuous genealogical arabesque which made such a case possible).

  In the intervening hours between that wakening and now, all manner of displeasantry has befallen me: A strange little dwarf of a man, Gustav, has stared at me for long hours, often making notes, and generally refusing to answer questions with anything other than a derisive tsk or tut; on two occasions he has been joined by bun-haired Ethelie, whose insistence that they “shall see good work of you, yet—or in the least, good canapés” is precisely as disturbing as one might suppose—although significantly less disturbing than the frequent visits by Lida, who sits upon the edge of my tiled temporary tank, gently stroking my left hunting tentacle and insisting that “this shall all be sorted out sooner than you’d expect.” Obviously, Lida’s visits are not disturbing in and of themselves, but are made so owing to the presence of the janitor Boggins, who stands in the doorway, his hands toiling within his trouser pockets in a most distressing fashion as his greasy eyes caress my visible convexities (the tank being somewhat shallow for one of my, ahem, girth).

  And all of this is the more frustrating because I do, as a very important cephalopod, indeed have very important business to be about, such as my much-celebrated advice column.

  So then, my advice for you this week is to consider the following: What commitments—real or imagined—keep you confined, and prevent you from returning to your prime and true work, that of writing That Very Special Thing Which You and You Alone Must Compose?

  In this Predicament I Remain,

  Your Giant Squid

  Advice Columnist & Literary Advisor

  My Dearest Typistas and Quilleros,

  I fear matters have, for me, become substantially more grim in the intervening week. Specifically, despite Lida’s insistence that we shall soon sort out my implicit confinement here within the strange towers of the Fiction-Writing Directorate, I seem to have, in the meantime, dug my own grave—or, essentially no different, garnished my own serving platter.

  Yesterday I submitted to a mid-afternoon interview with Ethelie and Gustav, the latter clutching yet a new and even more be-paperéd clip board. Gustav was especially particular in elucidating, in great and terrifying detail, the increasing debts I incur as they quarter me here.

  Gustav further made clear that my vast writing credentials and experience in project management of both supergun and weather-control programs (leaving aside my brief, noncontiguous stints as President of These United States and frontsquid of a glamorous rock-whilst-rolling minstrel’s band) earn me little formal recognition among the upper management and investors of the Directorate, in terms of gainful employment.

  Ethelie then indicated that, having analyzed their staffing needs, the Directorate currently has only two open posts: a) a French translator (by which I took her to mean one who could translate from French to English, the lingua non-franca of the Directorate itself, rather than a generic translator who is of French extraction) or b) a source of valuable and tasty protein for the cafeteria buffet.

  As it would happen, prior to spending four days and three nights in Quebec City several years past, I was briefly tutored in this tongue by one of the many startlingly violent, somewhat nefarious, but otherwise basically agreeable francophonic chimps who serve as my paid executive assistants. As such, I elected to interview for the former position—yes, I was less qualified for it, but it was nonetheless more desirable, as it started at a higher wage, included a matching 401k fund, and did not result in my immediate death and dismemberment.

  Madam Ethelie quickly rattled off a looping, staccato chain of French declarations trailing a single lilting interrogative. In response, I deployed the first French phrase that came to my razorish beak—and, incidentally, the only French phrase I know not directly related to procuring food or drink, booking passage by freight train, or complaining about the qualities of bed-and-breakfast accommodations. I was, at that time, under the impression that the phrase served in somewhat the same capacity as “And a many and fine good day to you, sir or madame”:

  “Va pèter dans le trèfle, maudite fausse-couche!”

  Had a Victrola jukebox been playing at that moment, its needle would have noisily scraped free of the record, and in the ensuing silence crickets would have sung but briefly, then stopped. Gustav’s jaw dropped, and Ethelie’s glacial face began to calve, only to halt itself mid-collapse and petrify, her lips a line thin and sharp enough to slice a hard cheese. Even the janitor Boggins briefly paused in his trouser-pocket toils. Lida, sweet and well-meaning
Lida, giggled, then covered her mouth to stifle the trickle, then guffawed.

  Ethelie turned on her hobnailed heel and, stately as a cloud of mustard gas, left my room. Gustav made a single, authoritative tick on his papers, then followed. I was soon thereafter informed that I had been hired to serve in the cafeteria.

  NOW, DEAR READERS AND WRITERS, I NOTE:

  There is truth—often unintended truth—in the speech of our mouths, and although my Quebecois greeting held not the meaning I had intended, its Truth is beyond doubt. Today’s exercise is this:

  Quickly, and without undue pre-consideration, settle upon two characters whose goals are at crosscurrent: Perhaps you might imagine a car salesperson who desperately needs to sell an ill-used 1982 Chevrolet Chevette at a slightly exorbitant rate, despite the dismembered corpse concealed in the bay which ought to hold the Chevette’s spare tire. His counterpart is, of course, a purchaser who is anxious to transport a soon-to-be-reanimated corpse, but whose bejeweled Lana Marks Cleopatra clutch does not contain funds sufficient to the demands of the lusty salesperson—although it does contain a gun, which lacks bullets, and which she would prefer not to reveal.

  Write them into a dialogue in which all of the above is revealed, despite the speakers’ best efforts at concealing these facts. Do not use the words “corpse” or “gun.” That the corpses are siblings, and the buyer and seller likewise, may or may not come into play.

  With Any Small Luck I Shall Remain,

  Your Giant Squid

  Advice Columnist & Literary Advisor

  My Dearest and Devoted Scribblerians and Writorios,

  I text in haste and, I fear, without sufficient care, for I am exhausted: Today, I am to be transferred from the relative comforts of my tiled tank here in the Directorate’s tower to either the primary or sous-kitchen, so that I might be butchered and yet live again, first as sashimi, then as handrolls, then as calamari, then as taco salad, then as “seafood medley,” and finally as some abomination which Boggins reports Gustav has called “meatloaf surprise.”

  Thus, it should shock none that I suffered some measure of insomnia this past evening, passing the night in the company of Lida, who throughout the thin and gruesome hours stroked my tentacles and helped me dream of the life that we might have together, were I not destined for the chafing dish. Together we fantasized in great detail of our frontier life upon the prairies, she in her bonnet, me in my homespun, steam-powered velocitational suit, the bright and life-giving sun lending my brass fittings a warm glow as I cut the sod for our house, set the timbers for our barn, and dismembered the still quivering and lowing cows for our dinners. Meanwhile, Lida would spin us fine angora wool from our many angora cats, which we would then weave into angora nets, and use to scoop up the delicious angora children from the neighboring angora villages, so that she might school them in the finer points of general literacy, poetic license, and flower-identification and pressing, prior to my spit-roasting them and selling their meats to nearby encampments of zombie Confederate soldiers, gathered to repel the onslaught of clockwork Union infantrymen come to staunch the flow of our dear Bleeding Kansas.

  But, Dear Readers, note that it is not the exhaustion of my long night of “could have beens” with Lida that makes my time so short this morning, for just moments ago my fair mistress and hostess excused herself to “powder the room.” When I heard the door creak again, revealing creeping—and undeniably creepy—Mr. Boggins accompanied by none others than several members of the troupe of francophonic chimps long in my employ!

  “I wired your monkeys,” Boggins said simply. “They’ve got your walking suit tip-top and coming up to steam, and are prepared to haul it most of the way to you, then you the rest of the way to it.”

  “My Mr. Boggins!” I did exclaim. “Why, I am somewhat indebted to you, I imagine!”

  “Yup,” Boggins said simply. “I figure I’ll let Ethelie and Gustav think that Lida let you slip away, and then find a way to get her out of the mess, and in the end she’ll fall in love with me.”

  I must have looked dubious, for he then added, “There’s still details to work on.” I opened my beak—despite my best interests—intent on helping Mr. Boggins realize just how many details he might be hoping will sort themselves out when my chimp Claude tapped on the face of the fine chronometer strapped to his hirsute wrist, and I took his meaning: It was time for us to make our exeunt, with all due celerity.

  And so it is I live to write another day.

  As such, my dear reader-writers, I enjoin you: Take a moment, for a moment is all you have, to very gently explain to a very lovely confidant why you have abandoned her to her no-doubt complicated fate. Time yourself; pen for no more than seven minutes, revise for exactly three, and work ardently to leave her heart intact…now WRITE! GO!

  I Remain to Opine Another Day,

  Your Giant Squid

  Advice Columnist & Literary Advisor

  At last Vishnumitra saw the King.

  The city was alive with beasts, mechanical and organic; there were elephants in the procession, stately and benign, draped with silk and brocade, bearing jeweled howdahs on their backs; then the metal men, marching in formation, sun glinting off their armor; the King’s black horse, riderless and unsaddled, hooves ringing, leading the King’s glory, the tallest howdah on the tallest elephant. Crowds leaned out of balconies, lined the roads, throwing rose petals into the parade. Horseless carriages of the latest fashion, just out from the King’s own factories, led the procession, but it would not do for the King to sit in one of those. There were few things, said the traitor to Vishnumitra, as royal as elephants.

  To Vishnumitra the elephants looked out of place. He was an outsider from a village in the far reaches of the kingdom, and the bright, ringing clamor of the streets, the heavy scent of roses and sweat were all too much for him. His opinion was of no account, so he said nothing. But he thought with some nostalgia about the home he had left behind these many, weary months, although the picture that came into his mind was one from his boyhood. Kind-eyed elephants bathing on the shore of the Ganga with the village boys, the water a gray sheet under a cloudy sky. Ahead were the steps of the ghat going down to the water and on the steps his mother and sisters, saris billowing red and orange. It was early morning; it was going to rain. On the rise along the shore the shisham trees spoke sibilantly in the breeze, their leaves a tender green. He saw his mother bend down and release the little earthen diya in the water, in its garland boat of woven leaves and marigolds. Her hands cupped the small flame to make certain it did not go out in the wind, but the currents pulled the diya away from her, and she straightened and looked at the little boat—fire on water—sail off midstream. Fire on water, a prayer released into the world.

  He shook his head to clear it of old memories and immediately the noise and pomp of the procession assaulted his senses again. Annoyed with himself for dwelling so much on the past lately, he tried to turn his attention to the task at hand: to get a good look at that elusive, all-powerful monarch, the great man who ruled Hindustan, the man who, it was said, would live forever. Harbinger of Peace and Prosperity, they called him, this mysterious man who would not let anybody draw his portrait or take his picture. He was not quite mortal, it was said. He had held off Sher Shah’s kingdom in the North-West, the Portuguese colony in the East, and the British territories to the South, and only magic of some kind could have accomplished that, said the sycophants and admirers of the King.

  Vishnumitra did not believe in magic; instead he believed in rigorous observation and systematic study. The glimpse was the first step; after that he didn’t know whether he was going to do it, or how he was going to do it. He was not an assassin, he had told the traitor. The traitor nodded as though to imply that all the assassins said that anyway, and Vishnumitra had felt soiled by the man’s polite disbelief. Somehow these days of waiting and plotting in the great nation’s capital had been the hardest period since he had left home two years ago. Perha
ps it was no wonder that he was tired; that his resolve was shaken by that deep, inexpressible desire to go home. Looking at the King’s portrait on the coinage of the country, the abstract, fluid lines suggesting a face beautiful in repose, he had thought about his mother making kheer in the kitchen. A portrait of the king, made illegally and paid for in blood, showed the lean, aristocratic face, the eyes large, clear, cold. “This is not very accurate, but maybe it is good enough?” the traitor had said. Vishnumitra had a sudden clear vision of the schoolroom in his village, the foot-thick mud walls, the golden thatch overhead, the view of the distant river. It took him some time to frown and say that he really needed to be able to recognize the King clearly before he could be certain he had killed the right man. It was known that the King had proxies who sometimes spoke for him on lesser public occasions. At least once, such a proxy had been killed. No, Vishnumitra needed to see the King face to face.

  “How can I be certain,” he asked the traitor, “that the man in the procession is indeed the King?”

  “For the anniversary of his coronation? Only the real King rides the royal elephant, my friend.”

  The broad way was divided in the middle by a long water channel that had been sprinkled with rose petals. Along each side of the road was a five-foot-high divan, a raised platform bristling with tall, plumed soldiers. The noise was tremendous, with shouts and the baying of horns.

  And Vishnumitra saw the King.

  The room he was in was level with the howdah in which the King rode. The building was too far from the street for clear viewing with the naked eye; they had already been searched for weapons by guards. So Vishnumitra put the telescope in position and squinted through it, waiting for the attendant inside the howdah to do his job.

  The attendant, in the pay of the traitor, did his job. He had an embroidered palm-leaf punkha in his hand and while fanning the King he let it catch in one of the King’s long braids. The King wore his ceremonial turban above his coiffure; the crown shifted, the black braids parted. The King turned instinctively toward the punkha, his hand already up to adjust the braid, his mouth an O of surprise and irritation, and in that moment Vishnumitra saw him.