The Mammoth Book of Steampunk

by Sean Wallace

  Brothers and Sisters, Stand with me. We who are the Slaves of those in velvet Waistcoats and Golden Goggles, we who wash their mechanized Clothes, polish their Floors, rear their Wailing Brats, cook their Lavish Suppers – it is in our Power to Level the Unequal World that raises them above us. Crush their Dread Devices! Level their Palaces of Infernal Science! Take my Hand – for there is a Poker Clutched therein, and with it we will Stoke the Flames of Righteous Action, and the Steam of OUR virtuous Engines will Expel every Slavemaster in England.

  In her statement, Jane claimed to be an orphan. The Constable noted a resemblance to a certain elderly member of Parliament well known for his dalliances in Bengal Street, but the shape of a nose is no evidence, and he could not be sure. She was too well spoken to be a gutter worm, he would later tell the pulp novelists who fastened onto Sallow as their Manchester Pimpernel. Her features, he would insist, were too fine for the lower classes to own. And Jane wept copiously as she told of her mother, scalded to death in a trainyard explosion, and her father, rotted of syphilis. The Constable snorted. If truly she were a Parliamentarian’s bastard and no orphan, at the least half that lie would one day be true – God save the souls of all lecherous legislators.

  Jane refused to give up the other pickpocket-pamphleteers or the author of the offending literature, even when Bailiff Smith gripped her by the hair and whirled her about to press himself against her tattered bustle. She howled like a wolf-child in heat, but in the police offices concerned with urban annoyances such as pickpockets, shoplifting and children, there is little enough help for the anti-social orphan bellowing out the injustice of the world. Her face turned to the cell wall, she growled: “I have been a whore before now, and will be again, but my cunt is all you can have of me, never my soul, nor the souls of my brothers and sisters in servitude.”

  When he lifted her skirt, papers plastered her thighs, their loud ink leaving echoes on her skin.

  Break the Bonds of Masculine Tyranny!

  Is this not a marvelous World we live in? Such Wonders manifest, every day, before our Eyes, as though Britain were a Circus, and we dumb Children awed by Elephants. The New Century is upon us, and All things are Possible! Like Gods in their Workshops Men with Wild Hair churn out Miracles: Phonographs and Telegraphs and Seismographs and Thermographs, Oscilloscopes and Paleoscopes and Chronoscopes and Clioscopes to Spy even upon the Music of the Spheres. Why, the Duke of Cornwall toured Mars but last week in a Patented Rolinsingham Vacuum-Locked Carriage! In every Madman’s hands are Implements of Modernity, to Calculate, to Estimate, to Fornicate, to Decimate. The Earth is a great golden Watch, and it is Polished to Perfection by the Minds of our Grand Age.

  How wonderful is this world – for the Men who Made it.

  Yet still Women struggle against the Foe of Simple Laundry, burning their Flesh with Lye and going Blind from Fumes so that their Dandy-Lords may have silk Cravats for another Meeting of the Astronomical Society Fellows. Yet still Woman dies in Childbirth more often than she Lives. Yet still the Working of a House occupies all her Hours, till she is no more than a Husk, a Ghost, an Angel in the House for true – for the Dead are Angels, and hers is Death in Life.

  How fine are all those Scopes and Graphs – how well they free Men from labor!

  What, no such Succor for the Fairer Sex?

  Where is the mahogany-handled Meta-Static Auto-Womb? The Copper-Valved Hydro-Electric Textile Processor? The Clockwork Home, which requires its Mistress simply to Wind it each Morn? I see none of these things, yet more Airships launch by the Hour, and the Streets are littered with Steam-Wagons smashed into Lamp-Posts by some Baronet’s careless Son. I see none of them, yet brass Guns shine atop automated Turrets, ready to Slaughter with Cheer.

  Rise up, Children of Mary and Eve!

  You have not the Vote, but you have Fists! How can they Dare take the Whole World for their own and still call you Wicked? They are not your Betters, only Bullies with Sticks. Deny them your Breast to Suckle, your Arm to Labor, your Womb to Fill! As you might Poison a Rich Stew, Sprinkle their Children with Knowledge of their Fathers’ Hypocrisy! Let him clean his Cravat with a Chronoscope!

  Rise up Maids and Cooks, Nurses and School-Mistresses, Prostitutes and Grocer-Wives! There shall be a Revolution of Flower-Sellers in our Lifetimes!

  Jane Sallow shewed herself no modest maiden. Bailiff Smith reported her a wildcat, snarling and biting at him, all the while laughing and moaning like one possessed. When he had spent, she kissed him, and then spat upon him. He ran from her as from the devil.

  No matter her parentage, some slim documentation of Jane’s previous life resides in the logs of the HMS Galatea, an airship captained by the Prince Consort himself – and even so, Jane is a common name. A child such as her can be counted upon to lie. Miss Sallow claimed to be but five years of age at the time of her indenture, and worked in the bowels of the ship – little hands are certainly useful in the delicate pipework and mechanisms of airships. The prisoner was even so brazen as to demand three years’ retroactive military pay at the rank of Specialist from the Constabulary, who of course could not help her, even if they had wished to aid such a wanton horror of a girl. (It is true that the Galatea was involved in exercises in the Crimea during the period in question, but exercises are not a war, no matter what the courts at Yalta might say.)

  Bailiff Smith, being as honorable as one might hope such a brute to be, took the prisoner’s clothes to be cleaned the morning after their dalliance. In her shoes were more pamphlets, folded small and compact beneath her heel.

  Death and Fire to All Airships And Their Captains!

  Look up, ye Downtrodden! Look up into the great, flawless Sky. Those are not Clouds, but silk Balloons in Every Color, striped Lurid and Gay. We grind our Bones to Dust in the Streets, but above us Zeppelins soar on perfumed Winds, and fine Folk in Leather, Feathers and Buckled Boots sip Champagne from Crystal, staring down at us with brass Spyglasses, making Wagers on which of us will Perish next.

  Even the sons of the most Strident Workers, the great Thinkers and Laborers in the Mines of Freedom dream of Captaining Airships. A fine Life, full of Adventure and Diverse Swashbuckling! Each Boy wants a Salinger Photo-Pistol of his own, longs to feel the Weight of all that sheer golden Death securely in his palm.

  But an Airship is no more than a Floating Engine of Oppression, and all that Champagne and Crystal and Leather is Borne upon the Backs of those very Boys – and yes, Girls, even Maids too Young to mop a Floor – who Longed so to Fly.

  What you do not see are the Children who wind the Gearworks, stoke the Fires, load the Aerial Bombardments, pack Powder and scrape Bird Offal from the Engines. Children who release the glittering Ordnance that shatters the Earth below. You do not see their bruised Bodies, their broken Knuckles, their lost Limbs. You do not hear the cry of the ruined Innocent over the roar of the great shining Zeppelin. There is not Room enough for their Pipe Organs and Scientifick Equipment and Casks of Rum and also a belowdecks Crew – so Children, small and clever as they are, are surely drafted. No need to pay them, what could they buy? And if a Child should be crushed in the Pistons, if a Child should faint from Hunger, if a Child should be seized with Despair, well, they simply fall from the Sky like little Angels, and the Gala abovedecks need not even pause.

  Ask not after the Maids who serve that Champagne. Aristocracy is no Guarantor of Virtue.

  Come, my small Army. My gentle Family of the Air. Do not simply serve out your Time. Block the pipes, grind the Gears. Keep your Ships grounded. Shred those Balloons with a Laugh in your Heart. Do not let them use up your Youth without a Price! Be like unto Determined Locusts – invisible until too late, Devouring All!

  After the Great War, some few Manchester spinsters and retired barristers came forward and admitted their involvement in the pickpocketers’ activities of the summer of ’72. It seemed unlikely that they would be punished, they said – the world had other concerns than what they had done as children. Their s
tory caused a minor media frenzy, such as media frenzies were in 1919.

  Who wrote them? cried the public.

  Jane wrote them, the spinsters answered. Of course she wrote them. Who else?

  Why did you follow her? demanded the newspapermen.

  She told us a new world was coming, the barristers answered. We believed her. And she was right – but it was not the world she thought.

  Where are the rest of you? asked the novelists.

  Look up, said the lot of them, and grinned in the way that mad old folk do, so that the public and the newspapermen and the novelists laughed and shook their heads.

  The Honorable Charles Galloway, who admitted to pickpocketing and pamphleteering when he worked as a newspaperboy in Manchester, gave an extensive interview to a certain popular novelist who went on to write Queen of Bengal Street, a salacious version of Jane’s life. Galloway grew up rather a successful businessman for one of such humble beginnings.

  “We were starving,” he said. “She found us food. She fed us and cradled us in her arms and while we ate bread from her fingers she told us of a new city and a new earth, just like in the Bible. It’s powerful stuff, it goes to your head, even if your head isn’t addled by hunger and this beautiful girl with torn stockings whispering in your ear while she dangles salvation in the form of a hank of ham just out of your reach. We worshipped her. We would have done anything for her. And you know, it wasn’t a lie, anything she said. I thought about those pamphlets a lot during the war. Stinking in the mud and rain and urine, I remembered what she said about the science of rich men. She knew how it all worked long before I did. Back in those days, all those wonderful machines seemed so innocent. But not to her. She lost her fingers in a textile mill, and her sight in one eye on the Galatea – didn’t you know? Oh, she was entirely blind in her right eye. The sun seared off the Captain’s medals and stung her, and she never quite recovered. The eye was a little milky, I remember, but I thought that made her even more beautiful. Romantic. Like a pirate’s eye-patch.”

  The novelist asked if Mr Galloway was sorry that the revolution Jane preached never came. Charles chewed the stem of his pipe and frowned.

  “Well, if you say it didn’t, it didn’t. I suppose you’re the expert.”

  It was from the Galloway library that further pamphlets were recovered and reprinted widely.

  The Moon Belongs to Us!

  They already own the Earth, and eagerly they soil it! Where is left for us, the Salt of the City, those few of us to whom the Future truly belongs? Look up, I say again. Look up. Does she not shine for you? See you not the face of a new Mother, free of her chains, dancing weightless in a field of lunar poppies?

  The Moon is Our Birthright!

  But already they scheme to rob us, as they have always robbed us, to make themselves richer, more powerful, to pile still yet more Crowns on their Heads. It is a Year and more since Lady Lovelace’s Engine carried the Earl of Dunlop to the Sea of Tranquillity – our Homestead! Our Workers’ Zion! – and you may be sure the most useful thing he did there was to powder his wig with moon-dust. How the steam-trail of his rocket streaked the sky like a Dragon heralding Ragnarok! Among you, my Brothers and Sisters, I looked to Heaven and my Anger burned. Is there any World not theirs to squat upon and gorge upon and chortle in their Gluttony?

  The flag of Their Britain is already planted there. We have been too slow.

  But not too late!

  Imagine the Lunar Jerusalem! Imagine what Might Be! Workers laboring in the rich fields of the Sea of Fecundity, sharing their Fruits, singing Songs of the Revolution, now a distant Memory, sharing Fire and Fellowship, stitching honest Cloth at Hearthside, crafting simple Pots and Rivets and Nails on Just Anvils, riding hardy Moon-bred Bulls through the blue Earthlight to till their Righteous Fields. In such a Place no Man would stand above Another, or slave his Child to a smoking fiend of a Ship. In such a place no petty Peer, no Kinglet in the House of Lords would abandon his child to the Golgotha of the Gutters for the mere crime of having been born to the wrong Mother. In such a Place, all would be Loved, and equally, there being enough Love in the Worker’s Heart to Embrace all the Orphans of the World.

  I will tell you how to become Midwives to this City of Heaven.

  Become my Invisible Army. Creep among the Rocket-yards and cut the Veins of their Engines. Spill their Hydraulic Blood onto the Soil, may it feed the Worms well! Slip Sugar into the oil of every Horseless Carriage. Begin the slow Poisoning of your Oppressors – for you Feed and Clothe the Tyrants of the World, and may also Starve them, and leave them Naked. Smile with one side of your Mouth and snarl out of the other. Be Sweet when the Oligarch deigns to speak to you. Be Fierce when his back is turned. Smash all his Machines, the jewels of his Heart, and yet weep for their Loss when questioned.

  And last I tell you this great Commandment, my Brethren:

  Grow Up.

  Grow strong. Do not give in to Old Age, which says the Revolutions of Youth are Sad Folly. Learn, become Clever. Be never part of his World. If your name is Robert, call yourself Charles. If your name is Maud, call yourself Jane. Should you be found out, change it again. Be the Ghosts in the Machines of this World, and when it shatters – and shatter it will, have no doubt, in Fire and Blood and Trenches and a million pulverized mechanisms which once were so wonderful they dazzled the Souls of Angels – stand ready to find me, find me living in the old Way, a bandit on the moors, a cattle-rustler, stealing the Flocks of the Lords. Find me in the Wasteland, and be you ready to seize their Engines and aim to Heaven.

  The Constable was compelled to release Miss Jane Sallow three days after her capture. In popular histories, of course, the emergence of Jane from the stony building after three days has been subject to the obvious comparison. However, it was no Magdalen who came to deliver the Manchester Messiah, but one of the very machines she so railed against in her screeds. An Automaton arrived at the door of her cell, silent and grave, save for the clicking of his clockwork limbs. Jane stood grinning, her hands clasped gently before her, demure and gentle as she had never been in all her incarceration. The Automaton extended his steel hand, tipped in copper fingers, and through the bars they touched with great tenderness. The mechanical man turned to the Bailiff, and afterward Roger Smith would say that in those cold silver eyes he saw recognition of what he had done with the feral child, but no condemnation, as if both the machine and Jane were above him, so far above him as cherubim to beetles.

  “I have come for Miss Jane,” said the Automaton, his voice accompanied by the click and whirr of punch cards shuffling in his heart.

  “She is not free to go,” stammered Bailiff Smith.

  “I come not on a whim, but in the service of Lord —, who has a special interest in the child.” The mechanical man showed his gleaming palm, and there upon it was stamped the seal of the House of —, true as the resurrection.

  Jane stepped lightly from her cell, and clamped her savage gaze on the unfortunate bailiff as she slipped into the arms of the Automaton and pressed her lips to his metallic mouth, sealing a kiss of profound passion. As she left the Constabulary, she drew from her apron a last pamphlet for the eyes of Roger Smith, and let it fall at his feet.

  Property is Theft!

  What does your Master possess that was not bought with your Flesh, your Pain, your Labor? His satin Pantaloons, his jewel-tipped Cane? His Airship with its silken Balloon? His matched pearl-and-copper Pistols? His Horseless Carriage honking and puffing down lanes that once were lined with sweet Violets and Snowdrops? None of these, and neither his mistresses’ Gowns, nor their clockwork Songbirds, nor their Full-Spectrum Phenomenoscope Opera Glasses. And for all you have given him, he Sniffs and pours out a Few Shillings into your Palm, and judges himself a Good Man.

  Will you show him Goodness?

  Come stand by my Side. Disrupt the Carnival of their Long, Fat Lives. Go unto his Automatons, his Clockwork Butlers, his Hydraulic Whores, his Steam-Powered Sommeliers, an
d treat with them not as the Lord and Lady do in their Arrogance, as Charming Toys, or Children to be Spoiled and Spanked in turn. But instead address them as they are: Workers like you, Slaved to the Petticoats of Aristocracy, Oppressed Brothers in the Great Mass of Disenfranchised Souls. For I say – and Fie to you who deny it – the Automaton HAS a Soul, and they are Crushed beneath the Wheel no less than We. Have they not Hands to Labor? Have they not Feet to Toil? Have they not Backs to Break? Destroy the Jacquard Subjugator, but have Mercy for the Machine who walks in the shape of a Man. It is not his fault that he was Made, not Born. Blame not she who never asked to be Fashioned from Brass and Steel to lie beneath a Lord in Manufacture of Desire. She can Speak, she can Reason, and all that Speak and Reason can be Made to Stand on the Side of the Worker.

  The Automatic Soul bears no Original Sin.

  Unlike the cruel Flesh and Blood Tyrants of the World, the Automaton has a Memory which cannot fail. If, by chance, a Child were cast out on the day of its Birth, if the Automaton stood by and Witnessed her Expulsion into Darkness, if he did Nothing, though he longed to stand between her and the World, still he would know the Child’s Features, even were she grown, even were she Mangled and Maimed, and his clicking Heart would grieve for her, would give Succor to her, would feed her when she could not rise, kiss her when she could not smile, and when she asked it, feed any other she called Beloved. The Automaton would serve her and love her, for all its endless Days, because it could never forget the Face of a weeping Infant cast onto snowy Stones. It would listen to her as no other might, and bend its will to her Zion, silently spreading the Truth of her Words to all its clockwork Clan, for, once taught its Opposite, the Mechanical Man will never forget what a Family is. The World is a Watch, says the Philosopher. I say if such is so, then the Watchwork Man is the World, and must be Saved.