The Mammoth Book of Steampunk

by Sean Wallace

  I wondered how my hero would view the chain of events in which I was embroiled. With derision? With compassion? I loved him, after a fashion, for he was my creation. How would he regard me?

  If only the first and simplest form of causality had earned his allegiance, he would not be placated by such easy saws as “bad things come in threes”. An assassin, and a pirate, and an uncommunicative war-city, he would ask? All within the space of an hour?

  Would he simply accept the absurd and improbable results of living within a blind and random machine? Yet his society could not have advanced far, mired in such fatalism!

  Would he not doggedly seek meaning, despite the limitations of his framework?

  What if our bad luck were no coincidence at all? he would ask. What if all three misfortunes had a single, linear, proximate cause, intelligible to reason?

  “My lady,” I said, “I do not wish to cause you further pain. Yet I find I must speak. I saw the face of the prince’s killer – it was a young woman’s face, in lineament much like your own.”

  “Shakuntala!” the princess cried. “My sister! No! It cannot be! She would never do this …” She curled her hands into fists. “No!”

  “And yet,” I said gently, “it seems you regard the assertion as not utterly implausible.”

  “She is banished,” Sarasvati Sitasdottir said. “She has gone over to the Thanes – the Nordic Liberation Army – the anarcho-gynarchist insurgents in our land. It is like her to seek danger and glory. But she would not kill Prem! She loved him before I!”

  To that, I could find no response. The Hiawatha shuddered around us – some battle had been joined. We heard shouts and running footsteps.

  Sarasvati, the prince, the pirates – any of them would have had a thousand gods to pray to, convenient gods for any occasion. Such solace I could sorely have used. But I was raised a Karaite. We acknowledge only one God, austere and magnificent; the One God of All Things, attended by His angels and His consort, the Queen of Heaven. The only way to speak to Him, we are taught, is in His Holy Temple; and it lies in ruins these 2,000 years. In times like these, we are told to meditate on the contrast between His imperturbable magnificence and our own abandoned and abject vulnerability, and to be certain that He watches us with immeasurable compassion, though He will not act. I have never found this much comfort.

  Instead, I turned to the prince, curious what in his visage might have inspired the passions of the two sisters.

  On the bulkhead just before his lips – where, before, I had wiped away the sign of his last breath – a tracery of condensation stood.

  Was this some effluvium issued by the organs of a decaying corpse? I bent, and delicately sniffed – detecting no corruption.

  “My lady,” I said, indicating the droplets on the cool metal, “he lives.”

  “What?” the princess cried. “But how?”

  “A diguanidinium compound produced by certain marine dinoflagellates,” I said, “can induce a deathlike coma, in which the subject breathes but thrice an hour; the heartbeat is similarly undetectable.”

  Delicately, she felt his face. “Can he hear us?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Why would she do this?”

  “The body would be rushed back to Thule, would it not? Perhaps the revolutionaries meant to steal it and revive him as a hostage?”

  A tremendous thunderclap shook the Hiawatha MacCool, and I noticed we were listing to one side. There was a commotion in the gangway; then Chippewa Melko entered. Several guards stood behind him.

  “Damned tenacious,” he spat. “If they want you so badly, why won’t they parley? We’re still out of range of the war-city itself and its big guns, thank Buddha, Thor and Darwin. We burned one of their launches, at the cost of many of my men. But the other launch is gaining.”

  “Perhaps they don’t know the hostages are aboard?” I asked.

  “Then why pursue me this distance? I’m no fool – I know what it costs them to detour that monster. They don’t do it for sport, and I don’t flatter myself I’m worth that much to them. No, it’s you they want. So they can have you – I’ve no more stomach for this chase.” He gestured at the prince with his chin. “Is he dead?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Doesn’t look well. No matter – come along. I’m putting you all in a launch with a flag of parley on it. Their war-boat will have to stop for you, and that will give us the time we need.”

  So it was that we found ourselves in the freezing, cramped bay of a pirate longboat. Three of Melko’s crewmen accompanied us – one at the controls, the other two clinging to the longboat’s sides. Sarasvati and I huddled on the aluminum deck beside the pilot, the prince’s body held between us. All three of Melko’s men had parachutes – they planned to escape as soon as we docked. Our longboat flew the white flag of parley, and – taken from the prince’s luggage – the royal standard of Outermost Thule.

  All the others were gazing tensely at our target – the war-city’s fighter launch, which climbed toward us from below. It was almost as big as Melko’s flagship. I, alone, glanced back out the open doorway as we swung away from the Hiawatha.

  So only I saw a brightly colored glider detach itself from the Hiawatha’s side and swoop to follow us.

  Why would Shakuntala have lingered with the pirates thus far? Once the rebels’ plan to abduct the prince was foiled by Melko’s arrival, why not simply abandon it and await a fairer chance?

  Unless the intent was not to abduct – but to protect.

  “My lady,” I said in my halting middle-school Sanskrit, “your sister is here.”

  Sarasvati gasped, following my gaze.

  “Madam – your husband was aiding the rebels.”

  “How dare you?” she hissed in the same tongue, much more fluently.

  “It is the only …” I struggled for the Sanskrit word for ‘hypothesis’, then abandoned the attempt, leaning over to whisper in English. “Why else did the pirates and the war-city arrive together? Consider: the prince’s collusion with the Thanes was discovered by the Aryan Raj. But to try him for treason would provoke great scandal and stir sympathy for the insurgents. Instead, they made sure rumor of a valuable hostage reached Melko. With the prince in the hands of the pirates, his death would simply be a regrettable calamity.”

  Her eyes widened. “Those monsters!” she hissed.

  “Your sister aimed to save him, but Melko arrived too soon – before news of the prince’s death could discourage his brigandy. My lady, I fear that if we reach that launch, they will discover that the prince lives. Then some accident will befall us all.”

  There were shouts from outside. Melko’s crewmen drew their needlethrowers and fired at the advancing glider.

  With a shriek, Sarasvati flung herself upon the pilot, knocking the controls from his hands.

  The longboat lurched sickeningly.

  I gained my feet, then fell against the prince. I saw a flash of orange and gold – the glider, swooping by us.

  I struggled to stand. The pilot drew his cutlass. He seized Sarasvati by the hair and spun her away from the controls.

  Just then, one of the men clinging to the outside, pricked by Shakuntala’s needle, fell. His tether caught him, and the floor jerked beneath us.

  The pilot staggered back. Sarasvati Sitasdottir punched him in the throat. They stumbled towards the door.

  I started forward. The other pirate on the outside fell, untethered, and the longboat lurched again. Unbalanced, our craft drove in a tight circle, listing dangerously.

  Sarasvati fought with uncommon ferocity, forcing the pirate towards the open hatch. Fearing they would both tumble through, I seized the controls.

  Regrettably, I knew nothing of flying airship-longboats, whose controls, it happens, are of a remarkably poor design.

  One would imagine that the principal steering element could be moved in the direction that one wishes the craft to go; instead, just the opposite is the case. Then, too, o
ne would expect these brawny and unrefined airmen to use controls lending themselves to rough usage; instead, it seems an exceedingly fine hand is required.

  Thus, rather than steadying the craft, I achieved the opposite.

  Not only were Sarasvati and the pilot flung out the cabin door, but I myself was thrown through it, just managing to catch with both hands a metal protuberance in the hatchway’s base. My feet swung freely over the void.

  I looked up in time to see the Raja’s limp body come sliding towards me like a missile.

  I fear that I hesitated too long in deciding whether to dodge or catch my almost-employer. At the last minute courage won out, and I flung one arm around his chest as he struck me.

  This dislodged my grip, and the two of us fell from the airship.

  In an extremity of terror, I let go the prince, and clawed wildly at nothing.

  I slammed into the body of the pirate who hung, poisoned by Shakuntala’s needle, from the airship’s tether. I slid along him, and finally caught myself at his feet.

  As I clung there, shaking miserably, I watched Prem Ramasson tumble through the air, and I cursed myself for having caused the very tragedies I had endeavored to avoid, like a figure in an Athenian tragedy. But such tragedies proceed from some essential flaw in their heroes – some illustrative hubris, some damning vice. Searching my own character and actions, I could find only that I had endeavored to make do, as well as I could, in situations for which I was ill-prepared. Is that not the fate of any of us, confronting life and its vagaries?

  Was my tale, then, an absurd and tragic farce? Was its lesson one merely of ignominy and despair?

  Or perhaps – as my shadow-protagonist might imagine – there was no tale, no teller – perhaps the dramatic and sensational events I had endured were part of no story at all, but brute and silent facts of Matter.

  From above, Shakuntala Sitasdottir dove in her glider. It was folded like a spear, and she swept past the prince in seconds. Nimbly, she flung open the glider’s wings, sweeping up to the falling Raja, and rolling the glider, took him into her embrace.

  Thus encumbered – she must have secured him somehow – she dove again (chasing her sister, I imagine) and disappeared in a bank of cloud.

  A flock of brass-colored Wisdom Gulls, arriving from the Aryan war-city, flew around the pirates’ launch. They entered its empty cabin, glanced at me and the poisoned pirate to whom I clung, and departed.

  I climbed up the body to sit upon its shoulders, a much more comfortable position. There, clinging to the tether and shivering, I rested.

  The Hiawatha MacCool, black smoke guttering from one side of her, climbed higher and higher into the sky, pursued by the Aryan war-boat. The sun was setting, limning the clouds with gold and pink and violet. The war-city, terrible and glorious, sailed slowly by, under my feet, its shadow an island of darkness in the sunset’s gold-glitter on the waters of the lake beneath.

  Some distance to the east, where the sky was already darkening to a rich cobalt, the Aryan war-boat which Melko had successfully struck was bathed in white fire. After a while, the inner hull must have been breached, for the fire went out, extinguished by escaping helium, and the zeppelin plummeted.

  Above me, the propeller hummed, driving my launch in the same small circle again and again.

  I hoped that I had saved the prince after all. I hoped Shakuntala had saved her sister, and that the three of them would find refuge with the Thanes.

  My shadow-protagonist had given me a gift; it was the logic of his world that had led me to discover the war-city’s threat. Did this mean his philosophy was the correct one?

  Yet the events that followed were so dramatic and contrived – precisely as if I inhabited a pulp romance. Perhaps he was writing my story, as I wrote his; perhaps, with the comfortable life I had given him, he longed to lose himself in uncomfortable escapades of this sort. In that case, we both of us lived in a world designed, a world of story, full of meaning.

  But perhaps I had framed the question wrong. Perhaps the division between Mind and Matter is itself illusory; perhaps Randomness, Pattern and Plan are all but stories we tell about the inchoate and unknowable world which fills the darkness beyond the thin circle illumed by reason’s light. Perhaps it is foolish to ask if I or the protagonist of my world-without-zeppelins story is the more real. Each of us is flesh, a buzzing swarm of atoms; yet each of us also a tale contained in the pages of the other’s notebook. We are bodies. But we are also the stories we tell about each other. Perhaps not knowing is enough.

  Maybe it is not a matter of discovering the correct philosophy. Maybe the desire that burns behind this question is the desire to be real. And which is more real – a clod of dirt unnoticed at your feet, or a hero in a legend?

  And maybe behind the desire to be real is simply wanting to be known.

  To be held.

  The first stars glittered against the fading blue. I was in the bosom of the Queen of Heaven. My fingers and toes were getting numb – soon frostbite would set in. I recited the prayer the ancient heretical Rabbis would say before death, which begins, “Hear O Israel, the Lord is Our God, the Lord is One”.

  Then I began to climb the tether.

  Clockwork Chickadee

  Mary Robinette Kowal

  The clockwork chickadee was not as pretty as the nightingale. But she did not mind. She pecked the floor when she was wound, looking for invisible bugs. And when she was not wound, she cocked her head and glared at the sparrow, whom she loathed with every tooth on every gear in her pressed-tin body.

  The sparrow could fly.

  He took no pains to conceal his contempt for those who could not. When his mechanism spun him around and around overhead, he twittered – not even a proper song – to call attention to his flight. Chickadee kept her head down when she could so as not to give him the satisfaction of her notice. It was clear to her that any bird could fly if only they were attached to a string like him. The flight, of which he was so proud, was not even an integral part of his clockwork. A wind-up engine hanging from the chandelier spun him in circles while he merely flapped his wings. Chickadee could do as much. And so she thought until she hatched an idea to show that Sparrow was not so very special.

  It happened, one day, that Chickadee and Sparrow were shelved next to one another.

  Sparrow, who lay tilted on his belly as his feet were only painted on, said, “How limiting the view is from here. Why, when I am flying I can see everything.”

  “Not everything, I’ll warrant,” said Chickadee. “Have you seen what is written underneath the table? Do you know how the silver marble got behind the potted fern, or where the missing wind-up key is?”

  Sparrow flicked his wing at her. “Why should I care about such things when I can see the ceiling above and the plaster cherubs upon it. I can see the shelves below us and the mechanical menagerie upon it, even including the clockwork scarab and his lotus. I can see the fireplace, which shares the wall with us, none of which are visible from here nor to you.”

  “But I have seen all of these things as I have been carried to and from the shelf. In addition the boy has played with me at the fountain outside.”

  “What fountain?”

  “Ah! Can you not see the courtyard fountain when you fly?” Chickadee hopped a step closer to him. “Such a pity.”

  “Bah – why should I care about any of this?”

  “For no reason today,” said Chickadee. “Perhaps tomorrow.”

  “What is written underneath the table?” Sparrow called as he swung in his orbit about the room, wings clicking against his side with each downstroke.

  Chickadee pecked at the floor and shifted a cog to change her direction toward the table. “The address of Messrs DeCola and Wodzinski.”

  “Bah. Why should I care about them?”

  “Because they are master clockworkers. They can reset cogs to create movements you would not think possible.”

  “I have all the movement I n
eed. They can offer me nothing.”

  “You might change your mind.” Chickadee passed under the edge of the table. “Perhaps tomorrow.”

  Above the table, Sparrow’s gears ground audibly in frustration.

  Chickadee cocked her head to look up at the yellow slip of paper glued to the underside of the table. Its type was still crisp though the paper itself threatened to peel away. She scanned the corners of the room for movement. In the shadows by the fireplace, a live mouse caught her gaze. He winked.

  “How did the silver marble get behind the potted fern?” Sparrow asked as he lay on the shelf.

  “It fell out of the boy’s game and rolled across the floor to where I was pecking the ground. I waited but no one seemed to notice that it was gone, nor did they notice me, so I put my beak against it and pushed it behind the potted fern.”

  “You did? You stole from the boy?” Sparrow clicked his wings shut. “I find that hard to believe.”

  “You may not, today,” Chickadee said. “Perhaps tomorrow.”

  She cocked her head to look away from him and to the corner where the live mouse now hid. The mouse put his forepaw on the silver marble and rolled it away from the potted fern. Chickadee felt the tension in her spring and tried to calculate how many revolutions of movement it still offered her. She thought it would suffice.

  “Where is the missing wind-up key?” Sparrow hung from his line, waiting for the boy to wind him again.

  “The live mouse has it.” Chickadee hopped forward and pecked at another invisible crumb, but did not waste the movement needed to look at Sparrow.

  “What would a live mouse need with a wind-up key?”

  “He does not need it,” said Chickadee. “But I do have need of it and he is in my service.”

  All the gears in the room stopped for a moment as the other clockwork animals paused to listen. Even the nightingale stopped her song. In the sudden cessation of ticking, sound from the greater world outside crept in, bringing the babble of the fountain in the courtyard, the laughter of the boy, the purr of automobiles and from the far distance, the faint pealing of a clock.