The Dragon Lantern

by Alan Gratz

  “Captain?” Archie asked.

  Clyde shrugged. “I gave myself a field promotion. Thought it sounded better.”

  “You are in violation of Wichita territory,” came an amplified reply from below. “Leave at once, or you will be fired upon.”

  “Hold on there,” Clyde said. “I’m not here to attack. We’re after the FreeTok outlaw, Jesse James. He stole something of ours, and we want it back.”

  “You are in violation of Wichita territory,” the same person said again. “Leave at once, or you will be fired upon.”

  “Doesn’t sound like they want to talk about it,” Clyde told Archie.

  “Clyde, I have to get Mr. Rivets back. He’s my best friend.”

  “All right,” Clyde said. He turned to the speaking trumpet. “So, listen, guys. I know this is going to look really bad, but I promise, we’re just here to get our friend back.”

  Clyde swung hard on the controls, and Buster turned his back on them. “Run, boy! Run!” Clyde called.

  Archie wasn’t sure which of them was doing more of the running, Buster or Clyde. They moved as one, Clyde’s legs pumping in time with Buster’s thudding footsteps. The steam man rocked as the aether battle tank fired on them again, but it didn’t seem to do much damage.

  Archie went to one of the rear hatches to peek out. “They’re chasing us, but we’re losing them!” he called back.

  Suddenly Buster swung back around, hunkered down low and whistled, then turned and ran again. Another aether cannon blast rocked the cockpit as the tank came into range again.

  “Slag it, Buster! We’re not playing chase!” Clyde told him. But Buster was having too much fun. Every time they put enough distance between them and the aether battle tank to be out of range, Buster would turn back around and wait for it to catch up, sometimes taking another blast from it on his backside.

  Then, late in the afternoon, the aether battle tank and the regiment pulled up to a stop and wouldn’t chase them anymore, no matter how much Buster ran back and tried to bait them. The tank fired at them, but wouldn’t come any closer.

  “Why won’t they chase us?” Archie asked.

  “I don’t know, but it’s making Buster sad,” Clyde said. “I think he likes them.”

  “Look. There’s a little row of stones down there,” Archie said.

  Clyde magnified the window in the right eye, and they could see it plainly—a simple line of round river rock that stretched out in a wide circle, so wide they couldn’t see the whole thing. Whatever it was, they were inside it, and the regiment was outside it. And the Wichita soldiers weren’t going to come in after them.

  “What do you think it means?” Clyde asked.

  “I don’t know. But this is where the FreeTok tracks go.”

  “So this is where we go,” Clyde said. He turned the steam man around. “Sorry, Buster. Playtime’s over. I’m sure they’ll be waiting for us when we get back.”

  Clyde led Buster farther away from the stone circle, through empty fields of prairie grass that swayed in the breeze. They passed the ruins of round Wichita farmhouses and silos that looked like they hadn’t been used in thirty years, and finally came to a tiny town of round wooden buildings that were all in as bad a shape as the farmhouses. From above, Archie and Clyde could see that most of them had burned down, and no one had ever fixed them back up. Dust and tumbleweeds swirled in the streets, and blackened shutters hung crookedly from broken windows.

  “Ghost town,” Clyde said. “Ain’t nobody lived here for a long time.”

  Archie consulted Lieutenant Pajackok’s maps. “There’s nothing here on the map. Nothing in a big circle,” he said. A big circle like the stone one they had crossed. He showed Clyde the big, empty area on the map. “You think Jesse James is hiding out in the ghost town?”

  “Tracks go on through,” Clyde said. “To there.”

  Buster magnified his right eye again, and they could see it—a group of low, square, dusty white buildings on the horizon. Clyde led Buster closer. A few hundred yards away, they ran into a well-kept barbed wire fence and a sign. Buster magnified it.

  “‘Warning: Do not enter,’” Clyde read aloud. “‘Biological hazard. Chance of serious infection.’” It was written in Anglish, Wichita, Lakota, Acadian, Iroquois, and Spanish. “So that’s why they didn’t come in after us.”

  The tracks from the James Gang’s getaway car led straight through the barbed wire gate.

  “I’ll go,” Archie said. “I can’t get infected. I’ve never been sick a day in my life.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Clyde said.

  “But—”

  “But I’m staying inside Buster,” Clyde said, and Archie agreed.

  Buster stepped over the barbed wire fence with ease, and Clyde steered him toward the buildings. They were made of concrete and painted white, although years in the dusty prairie had turned them a dull brown. The roofs were all intact, though, and as they drew closer, they could see smoke rising from some of them, and people moving about outside.

  No, not people. Tik Toks.

  FreeToks, to be more specific. They gathered around Buster as he came into the heart of the buildings, and Clyde lowered Archie down to meet them.

  The machine men were all shapes and sizes, and all of them had their wind-up keys in the middle of their chests, where they could turn them themselves. Some of them looked like Emartha Machine Men—Mark IIs and IVs, and even a Mark I, Archie thought. But more of them looked like Jesse James had, more human, and each with a unique face, a model of machine man Archie had never seen before. The rest were wild hybrids—a Mark IV head on a John Running-Deer tractor; a Mark II torso and head on a steam horse, making a kind of steam centaur; a clockwork spider with no sort of human-looking head at all, and more.

  And right in the middle of them, with a raygun pointed at Archie, was the outlaw FreeTok Jesse James.

  “Not too afraid of getting sick, are you, son?” James said.

  “No,” Archie said. He took a step forward. “Or rayguns either. None of that stuff works on me.”

  Jesse James laughed—a machine man who laughed!—and kept his raygun pointed at him. “I saw the big guy here when we hit Ton won tonga,” he said, gesturing at Buster. “Wished I could have brought him with me then, but here you come anyway. Come to bring me to justice?”

  “I don’t care about justice,” Archie told him. “I just came for my friend. Mr. Rivets.”

  “Your friend, eh?” James said. He looked around at his fellow FreeToks. “And what if your ‘friend’ is happy here and doesn’t want to leave?”

  Archie felt like he’d fallen off Cahokia in the Clouds again. Mr. Rivets not want to come away with him? Was that possible? If given the choice, would Mr. Rivets prefer the company of Tik Toks to life with Archie’s family?

  “Why don’t we ask him,” Archie said.

  Jesse James laughed again. “That’s a brass idea. Let’s ask him.” He slid his raygun into a holster on his belt and nodded to the other FreeToks, who moved on about their business.

  James nodded for Archie to follow him to one of the buildings. “You come alone?” he asked.

  “My friend Clyde is still inside Buster. He’s afraid to come out because of the signs.”

  “But you’re not,” he said, giving Archie a sideways glance.

  “I’m built different,” Archie said.

  James smiled. “So am I.”

  Archie looked around at all the FreeToks. Some of them worked in blacksmith sheds, hammering away at glowing red metal. Others repaired buildings. Still others sat at tables and talked and played games.

  The building James led Archie to had been an office building or a medical center of some kind once, but now was a clockwork machine man repair shop. They passed rooms of meticulously catalogued and organized parts, from arms and legs and heads to all the intricate gears and parts that went inside. Another room was filled with talent cards, categorized by compatibility and skill.

/>   James met a titanium Mark IV Tik Tok kitted out with a tinker’s tool belt and magnifying lenses in the hall.

  “How is our patient, Dr. Kenda?”

  “Recovering nicely,” Kenda said. “Though he’s still in a bit of shock from the procedure.”

  “Procedure?” Archie said. “What procedure?” He pushed Dr. Kenda aside and ran into the room.

  Mr. Rivets lay on his back on an operating table, with a horrifying array of drills and saws and rivet guns hanging from the ceiling around him.

  “Mr. Rivets! Mr. Rivets!” Archie cried. He ran to the table and scooped the thousand-pound machine man up into his arms. “Mr. Rivets, what did they do to you?”

  “Well, you don’t see that every day,” Jesse James said. He leaned on the door frame and pushed his cowboy hat back in surprise.

  “I can lift more than this,” Archie said. “And I can punch your head right off your shoulders. I will, too, if you’ve hurt Mr. Rivets.”

  “I meant a meatbag caring whether his machine man was hurt or not,” James said. “Though the other is a surprise too.”

  Mr. Rivets stirred in Archie’s arms.

  “I’m quite all right, Archie,” Mr. Rivets said. “You may put me down.”

  Archie set Mr. Rivets down with a clank. “You—you called me Archie. Not Master Archie.”

  Mr. Rivets’s surprise subroutine lifted his eyebrows. “Did I?”

  James laughed. “Just one of the little fixes that come standard with our ‘Panther-level’ upgrade package.”

  That’s when Archie saw it—Mr. Rivets’s wind-up key. They had moved it from his back to his front, to the middle of his chest where he could turn it himself!

  “My wind-up key,” Mr. Rivets said, marveling at it. He lifted an arm to try it, and paused. Archie had never seen Mr. Rivets so … stunned before. Archie felt the same way.

  Mr. Rivets put a hand to the key and turned it.

  “I am a self-winding machine man,” he whispered with awe.

  “You’ll also find that you can now replace your own talent cards,” Dr. Kenda said, coming into the room. “And I’ve removed the command that compels you to obey your masters. Or call them ‘master,’ for that matter. You can also laugh and cry now, and do other things you couldn’t do before. Like lie.”

  Archie’s eyes went wide. Mr. Rivets lie? It wasn’t possible! Mark II Machine Men were programmed not to lie! When they were forced to keep a secret, they said “I’m afraid I couldn’t say” instead.

  “In short, you’re a FreeTok,” James said from the doorway.

  “You have also removed my nameplate,” Mr. Rivets said. He put a hand to his chest where the little brass plate that said MR. RIVETS used to be.

  James tossed the nameplate back to Mr. Rivets. “Most of us, when we become free, choose to shed our factory names and take on new names, like Dr. Kenda and me.”

  “My name used to be ‘Mr. Dongle,’ for torque’s sake,” Dr. Kenda said.

  “Our old names were vestiges of our slavery,” James said.

  “Slavery?” Archie said. “Mr. Rivets wasn’t a slave!”

  “Wasn’t he?” James asked. “Could he do anything you told him not to? Could he leave your service if he wanted to? Did he have any kind of life of his own that wasn’t serving you? Do you have a piece of paper that says you own him?”

  “He’s a clockwork man! A machine!” Archie said.

  James jumped from the door frame and pulled his shirt open, revealing his own wind-up key. “So am I! But that doesn’t mean I don’t have emotions and desires—it doesn’t mean I don’t want a life of my own.”

  “You mustn’t blame Mr. James,” Mr. Rivets told Archie. “He is independent by design. He is a Mark III Machine Man.”

  Archie suddenly understood. A Mark III Machine Man! He’d never seen one before. The Mark IIIs had been advertised as “almost human,” and they were: They had human emotions and human desires, and could laugh and think and lie. And they weren’t happy about being servants. There’d been an uprising—the Mark III Revolt of 1831, led by a Tik Tok named Mr. Turner—and they had all eventually been recalled and dismantled.

  Well, most of them, at least. There were rumors that some of them had gotten away, and were hiding out in Brasil.

  And apparently Wichita territory too.

  “The Mark IIIs proved … untrustworthy,” Mr. Rivets said.

  “No,” James said. “It’s just that the humans who ‘owned’ us never did anything to earn our trust.”

  “Are you going to try to stop me from taking Mr. Rivets back?” Archie asked.

  “Not if that’s what he wants,” James said. “But if he says he wants to stay, I’ll do everything I can to stop you.”

  Coming in here, Archie had been sure Mr. Rivets would want to come with him. But now he wasn’t sure if that was what the machine man really wanted, or if it had just been his metal punch cards talking.

  “If you want to stay, Mr. Rivets, I—I’ll understand. I won’t try to take you away,” Archie said.

  Mr. Rivets straightened. “I wouldn’t think of leaving you, Archie. Master Archie.”

  Archie threw himself into Mr. Rivets’s arms, careful not to crush him, and Mr. Rivets hugged him back.

  “You don’t have to call me ‘master’ anymore if you don’t want to,” Archie said.

  “I use the term now only as an expression of my respect for you and your youth,” Mr. Rivets said.

  “What about your name?” Archie asked. “Are you still going to be Mr. Rivets?”

  “My name has been Mr. Rivets for more than one hundred years, Master Archie. I’m not sure what else I would want to be called.”

  “You could call yourself Mr. Dent,” Archie told him. “After all, you’re as much a part of the family as any of us.”

  Mr. Rivets held Archie at arm’s length, but said and did nothing more for a time.

  “Mr. Rivets? Are you all right?” Archie asked.

  “I believe I am experiencing an emotion, Master Archie, and the feeling is quite new to me. I thank you for the kind offer. And thank you, Doctor, and Mr. James, for my … upgrade.”

  Jesse James stepped aside. “You’re free to go, then,” he told them. He stopped Archie on the way out. “It’s rare I find somebody as loyal to their machine man as he is to them.” Archie took it as a compliment and nodded his thanks.

  “What is this place?” Archie asked on the way out.

  “Dodge City,” James said. “The local Wichita call it that because they learned to stay away from it. They dodge it like the plague. Maybe that’s what they were messing with here. I don’t know.”

  “Then the signs about the biohazard are real?”

  James shrugged. “They were a long time ago. I don’t know if it’s safe for humans here anymore or not. You’re the first meatbags we’ve had to visit. We call it Dodge City because it’s the only place north of New Spain we can dodge the recall. What it was before we got here, we don’t really know—but we do know it was a bad, bad place.”

  James wiped dust away from a brass plaque on the wall, and Archie gasped. Etched into the brass was a pyramid eye inside a seven-pointed star. The symbol of the Septemberist Society.

  “By the Maker,” Mr. Rivets said.

  “You know this logo?” James asked. “It’s all over everything here.”

  “Yes,” Archie said. “Yes, we know it.”

  “Then maybe you’ll understand this,” James said. He led them to another building, past rooms filled with overturned, dusty furniture and rooms full of books and toys, to a dark room filled with mothballed machinery. Jesse James threw a switch on the wall, and windows opened at the top of the walls, letting in a flood of light.

  There, trapped in an enormous block of blue amber like a bug, was a girl.

  A girl with wings.

  17

  Dr. Kenda threw a lever, and the tubes connected to the amber that held the bird girl began to hum. “I’m not sure th
is is going to work,” he said. “This technology—it’s far in advance of anything I’ve ever seen or worked with before.”

  Not for the first time, Archie wished Hachi and Fergus were there with him. Fergus would know exactly how to get the bird girl out of her translucent blue prison, and Hachi would know how to deal with her when she awoke.

  If she awoke.

  “I still don’t think she’s alive in there,” Jesse James said. He and Mr. Rivets were the only others in the room.

  “We have to try,” Archie said.

  A large metal box with pipes flowing in and out of it clicked on, and a lightbulb came on above the blue amber.

  “Lektricity,” Mr. Rivets said.

  Archie nodded. Whatever this was, whatever the Septemberists had been doing here, it wasn’t good.

  Another machine kicked on, and another, and two more lights glowed above the girl in the hard resin.

  “I would step back at this point,” Dr. Kenda told everyone.

  The blue amber began to quiver, then ripple, and then all at once it vaporized, becoming a thin blue mist that was immediately sucked up by the tubes. The girl fell facedown onto the floor, suddenly free of the resin, and the machine clicked off.

  The bird girl was perhaps fourteen years old, and was beautiful and horrible at the same time. The top part of her was mostly human and all elegant. She was Illini, with light brown skin, dark black hair, and a thin face with a long, sharp nose it was hard not to think of as a beak. Out of the back of her brown beaded shirt sprouted wings—long, folded wings with jet black feathers like a crow.

  It was the bottom half of her that made Archie want to look away. Where her human legs should have been were two bird legs—rough, scaly things bent backwards at the knee. At the bottom of each, instead of feet, the bird girl had leathery talons, with four black claws on each. She reminded Archie of the Manglespawn—the awful children of humans and Mangleborn.

  The bird girl’s wings fluttered, and everyone in the room took a step back. She was alive! She tried to push herself up with her hands, but she was weak from her time in the amber. Mr. Rivets quickly moved to help her, and Archie joined him.