Ceaseless Steam: Steampunk Stories from Beneath Ceaseless Skies Online Magazine

by Scott Andrews (Editor)

  “Another—”

  Phidias paid no attention to the Colonel. “They’ve been coming here, coming to steal her—” He clenched the banister so tight his fingers turned white, then clambered up the skewed staircase and returned with several loops of heavy cable. “Help me. If we trip it, we can tie it—”

  The Colonel glanced at me and nodded to the Professora. She made an irritated noise, but I put my back to her tank, ready to defend her.

  Since Phidias wasn’t looking, I leaned over and exerted some of my Merged strength to wrench a bent pipe from what was left of the wall. But as I straightened up, a glimmer flickered in the corner of my eye—not from below, but behind, in the ballroom.

  “There!” Phidias whispered. “Do you see it?”

  “Yes,” I said, but in truth I wasn’t sure what I saw—something like the reverse of a shadow, a glimmer of reflected light passing from one pane of werglass to another. Sunlight, I told myself despite the heavy cloud cover outside, or some Merged reaction to the werglass. Shivers running down through my bones, I raised the pipe, backing up against the Professora—

  A shriek and clatter echoed behind me, and I spun to see Phidias clinging to the back of what looked like a four-legged metal spider. Dieterich swung his end of the cable and lassoed the thing’s legs, and the whole mess toppled over, chattering in a blur of unintelligible static. “That’s it!” Phidias yelled, scrambling away. “That’s one of them!”

  “An automaton?” the Professora said. “From Parch?”

  The machine looked up at her—a strange gesture from something that had neither head nor eyes. Instead, something like a scarab had been welded onto the front of it, and this rotated as it got a better look at us. “Parch,” it repeated in a surprisingly dulcet voice.

  “Oh, this isn’t good,” Dieterich muttered.

  I was not accustomed to the sentient automata that populated the Hundred Cities, and had always assumed they would be larger. This one, however, stood only about a foot taller than me, its legs folding out from a central core as wide as the Professora’s tank. The speaker at the base of the machine’s “head” thrummed, and a stream of atonal syllables issued forth.

  Dieterich shook his head. “None of us speak Lower Kingdom.”

  The automaton clacked, a sound that somehow echoed one of Lundqvist’s irritated sniffs. “I speak Imperial. Not well.”

  “I thought this was off-limits to both sides of the border,” said the Professora.

  “Rule of Parch, yes. Rule of earth, no. I follow rule of earth.”

  Dieterich drummed his fingers against the crumpled samovars, scarred brown digits tapping out an irregular rhythm. “So you’re here in violation of Hundred Cities law?”

  Its central column swiveled in place. “Rule of Cities, rule of earth. I am here for, hhhnn,” the speaker twitched as it thought, “pilgrimage.”

  “What?” I took a step closer, forgetting that I still held the pipe, and the automaton twitched, focusing on me.

  “That’s ridiculous.” Phidias got up from his place at the foot of the tilted staircase, his fists clenching and unclenching.. “Ridiculous. And the ones who shot us down, were they on ‘pilgrimage’ too?”

  It swiveled again. “Might be.”

  Phidias’ lips curled. “Then they’re in violation too,” the Professora said smoothly. “In the meantime, I intend to stay put.”

  “And for better reasons than that—thing,” Phidias snapped. “It’s a machine. Machines don’t have a religion. If you believe that ‘pilgrimage’ rot, then you’re—”

  “Belief isn’t the matter here,” Dieterich paused, glancing at the automaton. “Do machines have a religion?”

  Phidias snorted, and for the first time I found myself in agreement with him. Obviously, machines didn’t bother with such matters; the idea was as foolish as. . . as life remaining in a derelict airship. I cast a glance over my shoulder at the empty ballroom, shivering.

  The automaton’s insides churned a moment, an unpleasantly grinding noise. “No,” it said finally. “But this one will make her circuit regardless.” It rose up, snapping the cable as if it were no more than frost-killed straw. “This one is Transit-born, chosen female, designated Chaff.”

  Though he’d flinched back at the sight of the cable breaking, Phidias snorted at the “chosen female” bit. “Some automata do choose a gender,” Dieterich pointed out.

  Chaff nodded. “Stayed female fifty years. Before that, neuter. Considered gender a fad for younger mata. Changed mind before beginning Path.”

  “You don’t look much like a thresher,” I said.

  Chaff’s eyes swung toward me. “Do you look as you did when natal?”

  “Charles,” the Professora said softly, and I quieted. Behind her, a faint glimmer passed over the shattered werglass in the wall, gone before I could be sure that anything had provided that reflection.

  I shivered and glanced again at the empty ballroom, trying to convince myself that I’d seen nothing, a task that might have been easier had I not known I’d been designed to notice unusual things.

  ~ ~ ~

  The next few days passed far too slowly for my tastes. Phidias scrambled all over the remnant of the Chiaro, ranging from his little nest in the pilot’s cabin with cutting torches and saws in hand, claiming that the residue of Raisa’s work remained in the werglass logs in the “unnecessary portions” of the ship. I couldn’t argue with the fact that much of the Chiaro seemed unnecessary, but as wall after wall gave way to his incessant banging, the resulting headache seeped into my skull and would not leave. It didn’t help that he liked to sing as he worked, and though I couldn’t make out the tune, the echoes of it were deeply unnerving.

  Dieterich, for his part, proved much the same as his role at the Society: place a puzzle in front of him, and he was happily enthralled. Occasionally, he tried to find a way into the thaumaturgy chamber, since airtight emergency doors had shut that section off, presumably so that any fires that started in the airship would not affect the thaumaturges. Since the Professora was limited to those parts of the wreck that her wheels could traverse, she spent much of her time in the tea-salon, brooding.

  Myself, I tried to find reasons to stay out of the wreck. But there were few other places to go—our cramped propeller ship, the smeared wreckage of Phidias’ salvage expedition, or the barren mesa itself. Cold, dry wind drove grit into my eyes when I ventured outside, and though the heavy gray sky above threatened rain, I knew anything that fell would evaporate long before it reached us.

  The Chiaro wreck itself was little more hospitable: at one end was the uncanny ballroom, at the other a nest of airtight doors blocking off the thaumaturgy chamber. The pilot’s cabin itself was Phidias’ domain, though I hardly grudged him the space, since that must have been where Raisa herself had died. To reach the Professora, I had to cross that warped parquet floor, and every time I entered the ballroom I had the sensation of being watched. My mechanical reflexes remained alert, but with nothing to lash out at. And though I had passed for human for decades, here I was far too aware of what ran in my bones as surely as thaumic distillation ran through werglass. I slept poorly, dreaming of the metal inside me, of the airship coming alive around me as my own body betrayed and devoured itself, and woke to a ship that should have been empty and dead. But the occasional glimmer, trick of the light or my eyes or something more, made that “should have” more of a hope than a statement.

  If Phidias had been through three weeks of this on his own, no wonder he was such a wreck.

  My nerves went from unsteady to outright paranoid when, late one afternoon, I heard a tenor voice, clearer than it had ever been, echoing from the Chiaro. I picked my way through the second-class cabin, gooseflesh prickling my skin. It was a sentimental love song, the kind to which swains add their beloved’s name: even the wind follows your steps/but not as close as I/Raisa, Raisa. . . .

  The name sent a fresh shiver down my back, and I stumbled, knocki
ng over a broken bench. The singing stopped, and quick footsteps receded. I hurried through the door in time to see the glimmer shivering across the panes on the far side of the ballroom. To either side Phidias’ reflection, slower than he was, turned and ran. But deeper in the glass, held in the reflections of reflections, he was still dancing, arms extended to nothing.

  I started after him, then stopped as I realized the light in the room was dimmer than it should have been. I turned to the gap in the wall, only to see a blank scarab-face staring back. “Chaff,” I breathed, but the automaton turned away, its shadow following.

  I squeezed out through the wall, werglass bristles dragging at my trousers, and landed on the uneven mesa with a thump that sent dust spiraling out. Chaff made no move to elude me, forelegs folding to bring it closer to the earth. “Chaff,” I said as I reached it. “What did you do to him?”

  It leaned further, tapping its body against the ground, then rose. “Specifics?”

  “The glimmer—Phidias. What he was dancing with. You’ve been projecting that, haven’t you?” A coil tightened, somewhere in my gut. “You did, didn’t you? You did something to the werglass, made that glimmer. He was dancing with it.”

  Chaff was silent a moment. “I am not so strong,” it said finally. “Nor so active.”

  I caught my breath, startled no less by the machine’s serenity than by its tacit agreement that the glimmer was not my imagination.

  It continued walking, stopping every five paces in what I assumed was an approximation of prayer. “Pilgrimage of the Path is not worship, but consideration. Meditation on the liminal states. Here, on sin as well.” It bent again, this time murmuring a chatter of machine-talk. “I contemplate the echo of flesh in machine and the great sin behind it. Contemplation is not what that one wants.”

  The echo of flesh in machine. I put one hand to my chest, very aware of what passed for a heart there, of the thaumically infused flesh that kept me alive and running. Chaff’s life, if it could be called that, sprang from the residual thaumic infusion of her body; I was not so different, for all that I counted myself mostly human. “But if you truly mean what you say,” I went on, not quite able to believe I was entertaining the possibility, “then why did you tell the Colonel that the machines had no religion?”

  Chaff’s central column pivoted, the result very like a person cocking her head to one side. “Because he used the singular.”

  It took a moment for that to settle in. “You mean there’s more than one?”

  Chaff made a winding-up noise, and abruptly I recognized it as a chuckle. “One? That is like saying, hhhhn,” she paused to consider, “all flesh has one favorite music. Many kinds. And some prefer no music, or pictures instead.”

  “Many kinds,” I echoed.

  “Many and many.” Her scarab tilted. “Path of the Earth, best. Noughts, fine but talk too much, do little. Monastic Column, broke off from Path some time ago, idiots. Way of the Steel Emperor, all stripped gears, bent ratchets. . . also smug. Yes. Smug is right.” Chaff chuckled again. “In Parch, ninety-two sects, three hundred mata. Interesting conversations. Of those ninety-two. . . .”

  She went on, speaking more quickly, interspersing automata chatter and Lower Kingdom words. I could already feel my eyes glazing over at the thought of an hour-long discussion of sectarian beliefs among the automata.

  Chaff turned to face me. “You would hear Path of the Earth?”

  “I—” Although proselytizing automata might be worse.

  “Charles! A word with you!” Dieterich emerged from underneath our little airship, then paused as he saw Chaff. “Now, please, Charles.”

  I followed Dieterich behind our airship. “Yes, sir?”

  “Get Lundqvist and young Phidias. Make him pack up every last splinter of glass if that’s what it takes, but we’re leaving as soon as I get this repaired.”

  “Gladly, sir,” I began, then stopped. “Repaired?”

  “Yes.” He opened a panel under the propeller mount and gestured at the cables within—and the very noticeable gap where the cables ended. “Repaired. The motivating element’s gone. As well as half our fuel—enough that descending will probably be interesting.”

  “Stolen? You’re sure?” Dieterich gave me a look. “Sorry, sir. But who—”

  He chomped on his pipe thoughtfully. “Phidias is too scatterbrained, I think, to manage any real sabotage. Chaff, though. . . I rather like automata, Charles, but they don’t think the same way we do.”

  I thought of Chaff’s meditation on sin. I’d been so baffled by her that I hadn’t asked why she had been watching Phidias, or what the glimmer really was. I pushed away my lingering unease over the glimmer to concentrate on the more real, present problem. “It’s possible.”

  “More than possible. And certainly it would be convenient for the Parch automata if we did not return.” He ran one hand over the fringe of tight gray curls that was all that remained of his hair. “I can rig the ship to fire without it, but I don’t want to risk another sabotage. We’re leaving now.”

  I hurried back inside the wreck, scrambling over splintered benches, casting glances over my shoulder for Chaff. “Professora! Phidias!”

  “Here, Charles.”

  I paused at the door to the ballroom. The Professora stood before one of the mirrors, her brain reflected as no more than a pale smear against the glass. “Professora,” I said, not liking either how my voice echoed or how my reflections bent one after the other to follow her. “How soon can you pack up?”

  “Hm? Oh, a few minutes, I suppose.” She didn’t move, though. “Charles, could you do me a favor?”

  If it would get her moving, I’d do anything. “Certainly, Professora.”

  “I know you can see properly. Would you do so now?”

  I hesitated. The Professora and Dieterich both knew my nature, knew that my eyes were only one of the many parts of me that no longer had a claim to being human.

  “Your secret will be safe. Phidias is off cutting through walls to get to his lost Raisa, so he won’t see you.”

  At that I started. “You knew?”

  She let out a long, slow noise, not unlike a sigh. “Fiddy and were close once. I can tell when he’s in love. Please, Charles.”

  I blinked, then focused, lenses sliding in front of my eyes as they adjusted, the pressure in what in humans was the sinus cavity building into a slow headache. “What exactly am I looking at?” I said, flicking from lens to lens.

  “The glass, Charles. And I think you’ve seen it too.”

  My mouth was dry, and I forced away the memory of Phidias dancing with nothing. “A ghost?” I managed, failing to imply that the idea was foolish.

  “That’s what Fiddy thinks,” the Professora said simply.

  I shifted the last lens into place and caught my breath. Through the altered lenses of my Merged physiognomy, the werglass to every side flared and flickered, energy chasing through it like a flock of birds in the air, like fire across a grass plain. “There’s a trace of power still moving through the glass.” Not a ghost, after all, but residual energy, something left over from its former use. No more a ghost than the lenses I used were an intruder in my body. “It’s not coherent, though. The glass isn’t in use, it’s just still powered. Somehow.”

  “I thought so. My senses aren’t exactly the same as yours, Charles, but I could still tell something about the glass. . . .” She sighed, her springs relaxing. “Do you know what they warn us about in theoretical thaumics?”

  “It’s not my department,” I said, still staring.

  “Embodiment. Loss of self. It’s worst for the thaumaturges; there’s a reason most airships only keep them on short shifts. When you’re using your mind to control an entire airship, it’s easy to lose oneself in the body of the machine.” She flexed her each of her styli in turn, like an artist examining her hands. “It’s almost the opposite of what they tell anyone going through the acorporeal treatment.”

  Echo of
flesh in machine, Chaff had said.

  “They’ve tried to transfer the human mind to automata, you know. Failed, repeatedly. You and I are as close as they’ll ever come to that, and my position is hardly enviable.” She chuckled, sadly. “But dying while linked isn’t yet fully understood. And now Fiddy. . . Fiddy believes he’s fallen in love with a ghost.”

  “An echo,” I said. And a sin? What was sin to machines?

  “Charles, I need you to do one more favor for me.”

  I adjusted my eyes back to normal, wincing at the pressure. “Professora, the Colonel has said we need to leave immediately.”

  “So we shall. This will only take a moment. And it will make the leaving easier.”

  The favor in question was simple enough: put down a ramp so that the Professora could finally reach the little pilot’s cabin where Phidias had been working. She waited in the salon, listening to the muffled cacophony as Phidias cut yet another section of undercarriage away, while I wrestled several fragments of benches into place and helped her wheel onto them.

  The cabin was the one part of the Chiaro that resembled any other airship: crammed with equipment, werglass consoles on swinging frames so that a quick pilot could shuffle between them when needed without bothering to consult the thaumaturges—the ones who must have been on the far side of the sealing door at the end of the chamber, I realized. Instinctively, I turned to the heavy chair built into the wall: the main throne, from which the pilot could run the whole dirigible in case of thaumaturgy failure. It was empty. “Raisa—she should be—”

  “Fiddy probably buried what was left,” Lundqvist said absently, turning over lenses. “If there was anything—it looks like the fire came through here, even if Fiddy’s been polishing it up.” She motioned to blackened, ashy marks on the werglass, the crazed and leaking lenses.

  Phidias’ blankets and foul-smelling clothes lay in a heap, swaddling shards and irregular blocks of werglass. “This can’t be his research,” I murmured. “I don’t think even the Colonel could draw anything from this.”

  “Which is why he kept Dieterich working on the larger pieces,” Lundqvist said over the growing din of Phidias’ work. “Poor Dieterich. He might play the hardened military man, but he’s too trusting.” Her lower stylus lifted disintegrating leather straps and dropped them again. “The werglass is useless, Charles. There is no hidden breakthrough.”