Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution

by Ann Vandermeer (ed)

  His little sister, however, clearly had no intention of leaving. She wordlessly followed Fizz as he crawled around checking the undercarriage of his machine.

  “I guess this job posting is open all week,” said Caleb, pulling the paper out from his belt. Luz had completely forgotten the original purpose of their ride. “Maybe we can go on Wednesday if we can get enough people.”

  “Sure,” said Luz.

  “So it’s okay if I work here?” Fizz asked. “You won’t get in trouble?”

  Caleb was worried. “Our father will be home soon—”

  “Wait,” Luz interrupted. Fizz and his car were the most interesting thing that had happened to Luz in a long time. “Mama’s in the mountains, gleaning in the tailings from the old mines. I’ll go to the shop and talk to Papa.”

  “That’d be great,” said Fizz, popping his head out from under the machine right at their feet. “Looks like you’ve probably got everything I need to get Rudolf up and running.”

  Luz left quickly, knowing it would be better for them all if her father knew what was waiting for him at home.

  The shop was the more or less permanent stall in the market by the courthouse run by their father. It served as the main bike shop in town. Luz and her friends had free use of a parts box that was pretty extraordinary by anybody’s standards, and their father had connections all over the place if they needed something he didn’t have, or couldn’t recycle or rig themselves. He fixed the post office’s long-haul cargo bikes for free in exchange for good rates bringing in stuff from the coast, but always insisted that his children—and his other customers—make an honest attempt at repair before they settled on replacement.

  Papa moved around the stall, putting away tools and hanging bikes from hooks in the ceiling. “Yes, he could have driven here from North Carolina,” he told Luz. “Before the Peak people made the trip in a few hours.”

  Luz didn’t doubt that her father was telling the truth, but thought of the hand to heart gesture again, of the difference between knowing and feeling the truth. She could feel the truth when somebody said the sun was hot, but could only acknowledge the truth when somebody said it was 93 million miles away.

  “That’s what he was talking about, I guess,” she said. “Fizz. When he said that it takes forever to go anywhere now.”

  Without warning, Papa dropped the seatpost he was holding to the shop floor. It made a dull clattering sound as it bounced back and forth.

  “Hey!” said Luz as he grabbed her arm, hard, and pulled her out the open end of the stall.

  Out in the street, he let go, and pointed up at the sky. “Look up there!” he barked.

  Luz had never heard her father sound so angry. She found it hard to tear her eyes away from his livid face but he thrust his finger skyward again. “Look!” he said.

  Luz stared at the sky, gray and cloudless as ever in the spring heat.

  “That is a bruised sky,” he said, punctuating his words with his hand. “That is a torn up sky.”

  His mood suddenly changed in a way that made Luz think of a deflating tire. He leaned against the corner support pole of the shop. “You don’t know what our ancestors did to this world. There’s so much less of everything. And if there is one reason for it, it’s in what this stranger told you. ‘Forever,’ hah! It takes as long to get somewhere as it should take—his expedience leads to war and flood.”

  Luz didn’t understand half of what he was saying.

  “What about the Federals?” she asked. “They drive trucks and have flying machines.”

  Papa waved his hand. “We are not the Federals. We live lightly upon the earth, light enough that the wounds they deal it will heal. Your grandparents’ generation fought wars so that we could rescue the world from excess. People like us act as stewards, we save the rivers and the sky and the land from the worst that people like them do. When you’re older you’ll understand.”

  Luz thought about that for a moment, then said, “People like us and people like the Federals?”

  Papa looked at her. “Yes, Luz.”

  “What about people that aren’t like either?” Luz asked.

  Papa hadn’t answered her before Priscilla came tearing down the street. “Luz! They took him! They came and took Fizz and his machine both! Caleb couldn’t stop them!”

  She slid to a halt next to them in a cloud of dust. “It was Sammy! He brought the deputies!”

  Luz instantly hopped on her bike, and saw from the corner of her eye that her father was pulling his own out from behind the workbench. She didn’t wait for him to catch up.

  Hours later, Luz and Caleb pedaled along abandoned streets behind the tannery and the vinegar works, looking for the stockade where the deputies had taken Fizz. They might have missed him if he hadn’t shouted out.

  “Hey! Luz!”

  Fizz was leaning half out of a ground-floor window in an old brick building set in an unkempt lawn of weeds and trash. As they rode over to him, a deputy rounded the corner and growled at Fizz to stay inside the window. Clearly, the deputies weren’t used to having prisoners. When Caleb asked if they could speak to Fizz, the man shrugged and instructed them not to let him escape.

  “The trial’s tonight,” the deputy said, then went back to the corner, where he sat on a stool and idly turned the letter-pressed pages of last week’s town newsletter.

  “I’ve had it worse, that’s for sure,” Fizz told them. “They seem a lot more concerned with Rudolf than they are with me. I hope your father didn’t get in trouble for it being at your house.”

  Luz and Caleb glanced at one another. The car had been much easier to locate than its driver. They had stood with the other younger people and watched uneasily while their parents and grandparents hung the vehicle from a hastily erected scaffold in the square. Their father had rigged the block and tackle the men used to haul it above a growing pile of scrap timber.

  “No,” said Luz. “Papa’s fine.”

  “I don’t think Rudolf will be able to say the same,” Caleb said.

  The serious look that passed over Fizz’s face made Luz notch her guess of his age back up another year or two. But then he flashed a wide smile and said, “Rudolf’s never offered an opinion on anything at all, Caleb. We hit the road before I figured out how to make him talk.”

  When they didn’t join his laughter, Fizz nodded and said, “I see that you’re worried. Don’t be. I’ve been in communities like yours before. Heck, I’ve even been in jails like this one before. Your council and—” he raised his eyebrow, “I’m guessing your father, too? They’re more concerned about the machine than the machinist. They’ll do whatever they’re going to do to Rudolf and then storm and glower at me for an hour and send me on my way.”

  Luz said, “Papa’s name came up in the lottery at New Year’s, so he’s on the council this year. And yes, he’s concerned about the machine. But I think he’s even more concerned about the use you put it to.”

  Fizz didn’t reply. He gazed at her steadily, as if she knew the answer to a question he’d forgotten to ask aloud.

  “‘Everybody could go everywhere,’” she finally said, quoting him.

  “Ah,” Fizz said. “Your friend said that everybody still can.”

  Luz shook her head. “I don’t think Sammy is my friend anymore. And anyway,” she added, her voice unexpectedly bitter, “he’s never wanted to go anywhere.”

  Fizz was sympathetic. “What about you?” he asked her. “Where would you go if you could?”

  Luz thought about it for a moment. She remembered Fizz’s route along the Gulf of Mexico, but even more, she remembered her grandmother’s stories of California.

  “I would go to the ocean,” she said. “My grandmother was a surfer. You know, on the waves?” She held her palm out flat and rocked it back and forth.

  Fizz nodded.

  “She says that I’m built right for it. It sounds…fast.”

  “And light on the earth, too,” Fizz said. “Am I sayi
ng that right?”

  “You’re close,” said Caleb, frowning at them both. “It’s ‘lightly upon the earth.’”

  Luz had never thought about how often she heard the phrase. It was something said by the older people in the community over and over again. “How did you know people say that here?” she asked.

  Fizz shrugged. “People say it everywhere,” he said.

  Luz had expected her father and the other council members to be arrayed behind a long table in the courtyard square. She had expected the whole town to turn out to watch the proceedings, and even for Fizz to be marched out by the deputies with his hands tied before him with a coil of rope.

  She had not expected Federal marshals.

  There were two of them, a silver-haired man and a grim-faced woman. Neither of them bothered to dismount their strange horses, only issuing terse orders to the closest townspeople to fetch pails of coal they then turned into the furnaces atop the hybrid creatures’ hindquarters. They seemed impatient, as was ever the way with Federals.

  Luz sat on the ground in front of a bench crowded with older people, leaning back against her grandmother’s knees. “I thought the covenants between the town and the Federals guaranteed us the right to have our own trials,” Luz said.

  Her abuela patted her shoulder, though there was nothing of reassurance in it. “My son,” she said, speaking of Luz’s Papa, “is more afraid of what this Fizz can do to us than what the Federals can. The council asked the marshals here.”

  Before Luz could express her dismay at this news, the council chair banged on the table with a wrench to quiet the crowd. “We’re in extraordinary session, people,” she said, “and the only order of business is the forbidden technology this boy from…North Carolina has brought to our town.”

  Before anything more could be said, Luz’s Papa raised his hand to be recognized. “I move we close this meeting,” he said. “We’ll be talking of things our children shouldn’t be made to hear.”

  The gathered townspeople murmured at this, and Luz was surprised at the tone. She would have expected them to be upset that they couldn’t watch the proceedings, but except for the people her age, most there seemed to be agreeing with her father. Before any of the council members could respond to the suggestion, though, Fizz spoke up.

  “I believe I’m allowed to speak, yes?” he asked. “That’s been the way of it with the other town councils.”

  Luz saw the woman marshal lean over in her saddle and whisper something to her partner, whose deadeyed gaze never shifted from Fizz.

  The chairwoman saw the exchange, too, and seemed troubled by it. “Yes, son,” she told Fizz. “We’ve heard this isn’t the first time you’ve been brought up on these charges. But you should be careful you don’t say anything to incriminate yourself. It might not be us that carries out whatever sentence we decide on.”

  Fizz looked directly at the marshals, and then back at the council. “Yes ma’am,” he said. “I see that. I’ve not been in a town controlled by the Federal government before.”

  Papa’s angry interruption cut through the noise from the crowd. “Here now!” he said. “We’re as sovereign as any other town in America and signatory to covenants that reserve justice to ourselves. It’s our laws you’ve flouted and our ruling that will decide your fate. These marshals are here at our invitation because we want to demonstrate how seriously we take your crimes.”

  Luz did not realize she had stood until she spoke. “What crimes?”

  Papa frowned at her. “Sit down, Luza,” he said.

  Before she could respond, Fizz spoke. “I can choose someone to speak on my behalf, isn’t that right? I choose her. I want Luz to be my advocate.”

  To Luz’s surprise—to everyone’s surprise—the voice that answered did not come from the council, but from one of the Federals.

  “Oh for God’s sake,” the woman said, directing her words to Luz’s father. “Andy, we came here to destroy this unauthorized car as a favor to you, not to watch you Luddites play at justice.” With that, she and the man leapt from the saddles stitched to their horses’ flanks. They both whistled high and hard and pointed at Fizz’s vehicle. It slowly turned in the air, held a foot above the ground by a strong cable.

  For the first time, Fizz appeared confused, even frightened.

  Then everyone was frightened, as the horses leapt.

  Their lips curled back, exposing spikes where an unaltered horse’s teeth would be. Long claws extended from the dewlaps above their steel shod hooves and the muscles rippling beneath their flanks were square and hard. They jumped onto the hanging car, clinging to opposite sides, steam and smoke belching from their noses and ears as they struck and bit, kicked and tore. The sounds of metal ripping and wood splitting rang across the square, frighteningly loud, yet still not loud enough to drown the frightened cries of the children in the crowd. Luz was as shocked by the sounds the horses made as she was by the savagery of their assault.

  In moments, the car called Rudolf was a pile of scrap metal and wood. The horses’ spikes and claws retracted as they trotted back to their riders, who waited with more skips of coal to replenish what they’d burned up in the destruction.

  The Federals swung into their saddles and the woman spoke to Luz’s father once more. “Do you want us to take your prisoner off your hands, too, Andy? We’re better equipped to deal with his kind of trouble than you.”

  “No!” cried Luz.

  Everyone turned to look at her. “If Fizz has broken any rules they were ours, not yours. You…you lot get going.”

  Luz’s father nodded at the Federals. The woman and the deadeyed man exchanged ugly grins, but they put their spurs to their mounts and left the square.

  Luz turned to the council. “And you lot, you get to explaining. What is all this? Papa, you can’t stand the Federals and their ways. None of you can. You’d put us in debt to enforce some law that you won’t even name?”

  All of the people sitting behind the table looked troubled, and only Papa would meet her gaze.

  “We protect our children from such things until they’ve reached their majority, Luz,” he said. “You know that. But since you all just saw…what we all just saw…” He hesitated for a moment. “It’s basically what I said earlier, Luz,” he continued. “Your friend there has a personal car, and that’s the source of so much bad in the world I can’t even begin to explain it to you. It can’t be allowed.”

  Luz rolled her eyes and walked over to the pile of debris beneath the scaffold. She pointed to it and said, “This, you mean? It doesn’t look to me like he has a car anymore.”

  She turned to Fizz for support, but he was still staring at the wreckage. For once, he had nothing to say. I’m his advocate, she remembered.

  “You should let him go,” she said. “We should let him go.”

  Before her father could respond, the chairwoman called him closer. They exchanged a few murmured words. Then she said, “The young man is no longer a danger to our community, or to the earth. He’s free to go.”

  Papa added, “He must go.”

  The crowd stood and milled around, everyone talking about what had just happened. Luz spotted her father approaching, and then saw her abuela shake her head to stop him from coming near.

  Luz went and stood beside Fizz. She thought about what she had learned about making and repairing things from her father. She thought about what she had learned about scavenging from her mother. She thought of the stories of gliding across an ocean’s wave told to her by her grandmother. She put her hand on Fizz’s shoulder.

  “I know where we can get some parts,” she said.

  New Orleans stank to the heavens. This was either the water, which did not have the decency to confine itself to the river but instead puddled along every street, or the streets themselves, which seemed to have been cobbled with bricks of fired excrement. Or it may have come from the people who jostled and trotted along the narrow avenues, working and lounging and cursing and shou
ting and sweating, emitting a massed reek of unwashed resentment and perhaps a bit of hangover. As Jessaline strolled beneath the colonnaded balconies of Royal Street, she fought the urge to give up, put the whole fumid pile to her back, and catch the next dirigible out of town.

  Then someone jostled her. “Pardon me, miss,” said a voice at her elbow, and Jessaline was forced to stop, because the earnest-looking young man who stood there was white. He smiled, which did not surprise her, and doffed his hat, which did.

  “Monsieur,” Jessaline replied, in what she hoped was the correct mix of reserve and deference.

  “A fine day, is it not?” The man’s grin widened, so sincere that Jessaline could not help a small smile in response. “I must admit, though; I have yet to adjust to this abysmal heat. How are you handling it?”

  “Quite well, monsieur,” she replied, thinking, what is it that you want from me? “I am acclimated to it.”

  “Ah, yes, certainly. A fine negress like yourself would naturally deal better with such things. I am afraid my own ancestors derive from chillier climes, and we adapt poorly.” He paused abruptly, a stricken look crossing his face. He was the florid kind, red-haired and freckled with skin so pale that it revealed his every thought—in point of which he paled further. “Oh, dear! My sister warned me about this. You aren’t Creole, are you? I understand they take it an insult to be called, er…by certain terms.”

  With some effort Jessaline managed not to snap, do I look like one of them? But people on the street were beginning to stare, so instead she said, “No, monsieur. And it’s clear to me you aren’t from these parts, or you would never ask such a thing.”

  “Ah—yes.” The man looked sheepish. “You have caught me out, miss; I’m from New York. Is it so obvious?”

  Jessaline smiled carefully. “Only in your politeness, monsieur.” She reached up to adjust her hat, lifting it for a moment as a badly needed cooling breeze wafted past.

  “Are you perhaps—” The man paused, staring at her head. “My word! You’ve naught but a scrim of hair!”

  “I have sufficient to keep myself from drafts on cold days,” she replied, and as she’d hoped, he laughed.