Steampunk International

by Ian Whates

  George Mann is a Sunday Times bestselling novelist and scriptwriter. He’s the author of the Newbury & Hobbes Victorian mystery series, as well as four novels about a 1920s vigilante known as The Ghost. He’s also written bestselling Doctor Who novels, new adventures for Sherlock Holmes and the supernatural crime series, Wychwood.

  His comic writing includes extensive work on Doctor Who, Dark Souls, Warhammer 40,000 and a series based on Newbury & Hobbes, as well Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for younger readers. He’s written audio scripts for Doctor Who, Blake’s 7, Sherlock Holmes, Warhammer 40,000 and more, and for a handful of high-profile mobile games. As Editor he’s assembled four anthologies of original Sherlock Holmes fiction, as well as multiple volumes of The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction and The Solaris Book of New Fantasy.

  His website is at www.george-mann.com.

  Reckless Engineering

  A Pax Britannia Story

  Jonathan Green

  ~ July 1998 ~

  I – One of Our Brains is Missing

  Steam hissed from around the hatch as the seals disengaged and the circular stainless steel door swung open. The man from the ministry lowered his hand from the scanner, and the glowing green palm print quickly began to fade.

  Inspector Allardyce of Scotland Yard took a step back as the clouds of condensing vapour enveloped him, filling his nostrils with an acrid aromatic soup of cryogenic coolants and formaldehyde. And then the mists parted and Allardyce found himself looking through the opening into the Vault itself; a great cylindrical shaft of gleaming, stainless steel, with a grilled metal walkway running around the top and an ornate cast iron handrail running around the top of that.

  Allardyce turned his attention to the door. It had to be six feet thick if it was an inch, with great locking bars that, when engaged, projected into the cylindrical holes spaced equidistantly around the hatchway. The Inspector doubted that even a bomb detonated right on the threshold would be able to break it open.

  The man from the ministry had entered a code on the keypad beside the door – having already done the same to gain access to the antechamber before the entrance to the Vault – and then had still been subjected to a palm-print and retinal scan before being able to open the door. Allardyce certainly couldn’t have got in without him – Malahyde, that was the man’s name – not without Malahyde being there.

  Allardyce followed the man through the hatch onto the encircling platform. Opposite the entrance, the walkway projected slightly over the vertiginous drop below, the rail curving outwards to accommodate it. Rising from this projecting platform was a small cogitator terminal, set within the top of a teak-panelled plinth. It looked not unlike a plant stand missing its aspidistra.

  “I must say, this is most irregular,” Malahyde said, tapping a switch to awaken the cogitator.

  “I’m sure it is,” replied Allardyce, tentatively peering over the railing into the well-like stainless steel shaft. Below, robotic spiders scuttled over the gleaming vertical surface of the shaft, tending to those in their care in their own unknowable manner.

  “I mean, this is a top secret facility.”

  “I’m sure it is,” said the policeman. “I mean, what would the public say if they knew?”

  The man from the ministry glared at him, some colour coming to his pinched cheeks at last.

  The analytical engine clicked and chirruped and a monitor screen glowed into iridescent emerald life.

  “So when exactly did you first notice that one of the inmates was missing?”

  “We prefer to refer to them as guests,” Malahyde said with quiet insistence.

  “Yes, but the word ‘guest’ implies that they could leave whenever they want, and nobody here’s going anywhere, are they?”

  “Hello, what’s all this then?” came a voice from behind them that caused both the civil servant and the policeman to spin round in surprise. “Don’t say you’ve started without me!”

  “Quicksilver?” Allardyce exclaimed.

  “Always so perceptive, Maurice,” the new arrival replied, smiling wryly. He was wearing a plum crushed velvet jacket, plum corduroy trousers of a subtly different shade, and a white linen shirt, offset with diamond cufflinks that complimented the diamond tie-pin securing his canary yellow silk cravat, not to mention the diamond-headed cane held loosely in his left hand.

  “That’s Inspector to you,” Allardyce railed. “I see you’re back from wherever it is you’ve been this time.”

  “Like I say, perceptive as ever.”

  “The Moon, wasn’t it?”

  “In a roundabout sort of way.”

  “Nice eyepatch, by the way. You deserve each other.”

  “Excuse me, who is this man?” the man from the ministry, who went by the name of Malahyde, challenged. “And how did he get in here?”

  “Ulysses Lucian Quicksilver at your service,” the dandy replied, deftly flicking open a leather wallet and thrusting his crown-authorised credentials in the civil servant’s face, “here to save the day.”

  “Does the day need saving?” Malahyde sniped.

  “That’s what we’re here to find out, isn’t it?” Quicksilver joined them inside the Vault as the spiders continued their strange nursemaid ballet. “I hear one of your brains has gone missing.”

  “We prefer to call them –”

  “Guests,” interrupted Allardyce. “They prefer to call them guests.”

  “That’s as maybe,” said Quicksilver, “but the term ‘guest’ suggests they’re free to up sticks and leave whenever they want.”

  “I know, we’ve been through this already.”

  “So you did start without me.” The dandy gave the policeman a petulant pout.

  Allardyce’s scowl deepened. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “I received the same all channels alert I suspect you did,” said Quicksilver.

  “What?” exclaimed Malahyde.

  Allardyce looked at him in bemusement. “Well if you didn’t send the message, who did?”

  The man from the ministry’s fingers danced over the cogitator keyboard, accessing the Vault’s data-log.

  “It must have been an automatic signal sent out by the Vault itself,” Malahyde said, sounding as if he could barely believe what he was suggesting.

  “Reporting that one of its occupants had gone walkabout,” Quicksilver said.

  “Hardly!” snapped the man from the ministry. “Besides, until we entered the Vault five minutes ago, no one had entered or left the facility since the last regular maintenance check three days ago.”

  “Could it be a glitch in the system?” Quicksilver asked. “A ghost in the machine? Although, admittedly, that doesn’t narrow it down much, because there are rather a lot of ghosts in this particular machine of yours, aren’t there.”

  “It’s possible,” Malahyde admitted.

  “Then I would suggest we start by checking to see if the errant ‘guest’ in question is actually missing,” said Allardyce, feeling the need to wrest control of the situation from the interloper.

  “Very well,” said Malahyde, tapping a series of commands into the thinking machine.

  A moment later, an articulated brass arm unfolded from the ceiling and a mechanical claw descended into the depths of the shaft. Somewhere, from far below, there was the distinct hiss of escaping gas, as a hermetic seal was broken and a sleek metal and glass tube slid out from the smooth wall of the shaft.

  The claw grasped the tube and completed the job of extracting it from its surroundings. The arm retracted again, and the claw finally deposited the gleaming cylinder in a cradle that rose out of the platform in front of them to meet it.

  It looked not unlike an oversized tablet capsule – a smooth cylinder with hemispherical ends, made completely from metal, apart from a glass panel halfway along its length. Through the glass, blurred by the viscous yellow-green liquid that filled the pod, could be seen the grey-pink flesh of a human brain, wires and electrodes connecting
it to the containment unit.

  Allardyce couldn’t stop a gasp of amazement from escaping his slack-jawed mouth.

  “So nothing has actually been stolen at all,” Quicksilver said, matter-of-factly.

  “So it would appear,” admitted Malahyde, somewhat sheepishly.

  “Are all your ‘guests’ kept like this?” Allardyce asked, staring in morbid fascination at the brain bobbing about in the preservative soup.

  “Yes.”

  “So what exactly is this place?”

  “Have you never heard of Think Tank, Maurice?” Quicksilver piped up. “You know how they say, all great minds think alike? Well they do here!”

  “What do you mean?” Allardyce asked, flabbergasted.

  “Think Tank is a secret Whitehall facility where the brains of supposedly dearly-departed geniuses are housed, so that they can keep working for the empire of Magna Britannia. I’ve heard rumours about this place for years. Only now I know they weren’t rumours at all.”

  “The Vault it vital to the smooth running of empire!” the man from the ministry blustered. “How else do you think Magna Britannia has been able to keep leading the way in terms of technological developments? How do you think we, as a nation, have continued to make so many incredible scientific advances? If it weren’t for this facility, Babbage would never have been able to perfect his analytical engine. And who do you think designed the second Crystal Palace?”

  “Joseph Paxton?” hazarded Allardyce.

  “Exactly.”

  “But I thought that the new construction was based on old designs of his.”

  “Then you thought wrong,” said Quicksilver. “That’s the trouble with the powers that be; they don’t like letting go of the past. Just look at Her Majesty, if you’re in any doubt.”

  “How many geniuses have you got stored here?” Allardyce asked.

  The man from the ministry’s answer, when it came, was lost beneath a cacophony of breaking class, rending metal, and the resounding crash of fifty-ton footsteps.

  All eyes turned to the entrance to the Vault. A vast shadow fell across the atrium on the other side and then a massive mechanical hand reached through the open hatch.

  The hand uncaringly knocked Allardyce aside, while Quicksilver deftly dodged out of the way.

  The man from the ministry was not so fortunate. The huge robotic fist bludgeoned into him, pushing him over the railing and off the platform, his screams vanishing with him into the depths of the Vault.

  It was quite clear, however, that the hand’s intention had not been to remove any opposition, but simply to retrieve the metal pod containing the not-so-missing brain.

  Cast iron fingers plucked the sealed cylinder from the metal claw and the hand retreated through the hatchway once more, with its prize firmly grasped.

  Stumbling to his feet, Allardyce followed the hand through the hatch. Looking up through the shattered glass and steel roof of the atrium, he saw a looming figure silhouetted against the smoggy-orange morning sky, great clouds of steam puffing from what appeared to be a colossal stovepipe hat.

  As he watched, dumbfounded, the towering automaton opened a door in its chest plate and placed the containment unit containing the brain inside, before slamming it shut again with a clang.

  Gunfire echoed from outside, as the police fought to fend off the robotic invader.

  “Who was it whose brain was supposed to have been stolen?” Allardyce shouted, suddenly finding his voice again.

  The dandy detective scanned the cogitator’s readout screen before turning and fixing Allardyce with his one remaining eye.

  “Isambard Kingdom Brunel.”

  II – Brass Brunel

  “So whose brain is it, sir?”

  “Brunel’s,” Ulysses Quicksilver replied as his manservant, chauffeur and all-round bodyguard Nimrod steered the Mark IV Rolls Royce Silver Phantom through the busy London traffic; traffic that had been made even worse by the fact that a giant robot was at that moment crashing its uncaring way through the capital, heedless of the horse-drawn hansom cabs, chugging charabancs, steam-driven omnibuses and endless automobiles.

  “So the original alert was just a ruse.”

  “Indeed. I would hazard that the esteemed engineer triggered the alert himself. Whatever else he might have been able to do from inside the Vault, he was locked out of tampering with the opening mechanism – a failsafe wisely put in by the Vault’s original architects. And there was no way the robot could break in from the outside, either; the Vault’s just too well-protected, too deeply-buried, and an open assault on the facility from outside would have led to an instant lockdown, leaving Brunel’s brain trapped inside.

  “He knew that if the Vault sent a message saying that one of the brains had been stolen someone would be forced to investigate. When Inspector Allardyce suggested we extract the containment unit to check that the brain was actually missing, it was as if he had gift-wrapped it for Brunel. With the Vault open, he merely had to send his robot familiar in to finish the job.”

  Ahead of them, further along Edgware Road, the colossal automaton continued on its way, paying no heed to the panicking people and chaotic traffic beneath feet, as drivers attempted to slew their vehicles out of the way of its car-crushing footfalls.

  “Ah, yes, the robot, sir,” said Nimrod, pulling hard on the steering wheel and swinging the automobile right to avoid a charging hansom cab, the horse pulling it fleeing in panic, foam flying from the corners of its mouth. “How was the esteemed engineer – or what was left of him – able to have this monstrosity ready and waiting for him when he did eventually effect his own release?”

  “I can only surmise that this has been a plan long in the making and that Brunel hid the designs for his cast iron saviour among the plans for something else. As many factories are now fully automated anyway, no one would have realised that among the Think Tank’s designs was one for a colossal robot.”

  “So, robots building robots. Well, that’s just a ridiculous notion,” muttered Nimrod.

  “It is the future,” Ulysses countered.

  “And is there still a place for human servants in this future of yours, sir? Maybe those neo-Luddites – those so-called ‘Steam Punks’ – have a point.”

  “Now-now, old chap, don’t be like that. You’re irreplaceable.”

  “Nonetheless, you would think someone would have noticed a giant robot making its way through London, right to the seat of government in Whitehall.”

  “Hmm,” mused Ulysses. “Good point. You didn’t see anything, I suppose?”

  “Not until it was too late and the machine was right on top of you.”

  Ahead of them, further along the Edgware Road, the colossal automaton reached up with one iron arm, grabbed hold of the metalwork of one of the lower stretches of the London Overground and pulled. Accompanied by a sound that resembled a hundred head-on collisions, a fifty-yard stretch of the suspended railway came crashing down into the street, crushing automobiles and delivery vans beneath it and creating an instant barricade to stop anyone attempting to follow.

  “Curses!” Quicksilver exclaimed as Nimrod brought the Phantom to a screeching halt, parallel to the makeshift barrier.

  Hastily taking out his personal communicator, he keyed in a number using the enamel keypad set within the brass and teak body of the device.

  “Inspector?” he spoke into the handset. “Was in pursuit but have just met with a slight setback. Any ideas where the robot’s taking Brunel?”

  There was a moment’s buzz of static interference from the other end of the line before Allardyce answered. “Eyes in the sky say it looks to be heading towards Paddington Station.”

  “That would make sense,” Ulysses replied, and then to Nimrod: “Paddington Station, and don’t spare the horses!”

  “Perish the thought, sir,” Nimrod replied. Putting the car into gear and revving the engine, he took off again through the confused chaos that was typical of the streets of Lond
inium Maximum, especially when there was a giant robot loose in the city.

  “Shall we meet you there?” Ulysses asked into the mouthpiece of his communicator.

  His question was met by a string of expletives from the other end and a noise that sounded very much like a devastating car crash.

  “Allardyce? Are you still there? Are you alright?”

  “Looks as if you’re on your own!” came the Inspector’s agitated voice.

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “It’s our cars! Our own cars! They –” Abruptly, the line went dead.

  “Sir, is everything alright?” Nimrod asked, swinging the car left and driving it at full throttle the wrong way up a one-way street.

  “No, it’s not,” Ulysses replied. “In fact I think everything is very un-alright.”

  III – GWR

  A matter of minutes later, a Rolls Royce Silver Phantom turned onto the entrance ramp that led down to Paddington Station. Barely slowing at all, it bumped over the gated barrier that had been flattened beneath a giant steel foot and drove into the station forecourt.

  Nimrod didn’t need to ask for directions to determine which way to go; the trail of devastation ahead of them told them all they needed to know. Besides, it would have been hard to miss the colossus as it strode across the concourse, its stove-pipe chimney-hat scraping the roof struts supporting the famed glazed roof – one of Brunel’s own designs – even as it ducked to make its way through the station. Only, Ulysses realised, the robot wasn’t crouching down, it was transforming.

  As Nimrod steered the Silver Phantom along the platform, its Rolls Royce engine roaring and people screaming as they threw themselves out of the way of the speeding vehicle, the huge automaton’s legs folded beneath it. Great iron wheels emerged as panels opened in its cast iron calves, while its haunches took on the appearance of an engineman’s cab.

  The robot’s arms opened, revealing more wheels, while what Ulysses had at first taken to be the joints of the mechanical’s elbows were also revealed to be spoked iron wheels. Its cylindrical body, which contained the boiler and the source of its motive power, became the boiler-body of the engine, while its neck ratchetted backwards so that its head, with those crude man-like features, became the front of the locomotive, its stove-pipe hat forming the chimney.