Gods of Chicago: Omnibus Edition

by Sikes, AJ

  “It’s how we’re getting out of here. The niggers are helping out because the Governor’s after them same as us. And, hey, extra hands make for easy work. You know?”

  Brand knew. Stevie had said it all.

  Through the trapdoor Brand heard the familiar sound of glass against glass. Someone laughing. A piano tinkling and then going silent. Then the crackle of a radio and Franklin Suttleby’s voice filtered down from the room above.

  …are advised to remain indoors. Patrols from the Ministry of Safety and Security will be sweeping these areas, and citizens can rest assured that the criminals will be captured and prosecuted for—

  “Someone turn the damn radio off,” a woman’s voice said from the room upstairs. The radio crackled into silence. Brand crossed the cellar in a few strides and put a foot on the ladder. At the top, the warm light of a speakeasy settled Brand’s nerves. The cigarette someone handed him went a long way to settling him further, but the drink he reached for really did the trick. He had a second for Jenkins and a third for Digs.

  Brand took in the room, the olive and coffee mix of gypsy and negro faces. Some stood in exclusive clutches, but musicians from both groups gathered by the piano and took turns tickling the teeth. Against the far wall a lone woman sat draped in a heavy wool blanket. She sipped wine from a glass and held a book open on the table beside her. Her red hair stood out in the flickering candlelight, the only sign of color in the otherwise drab space of the speak.

  Brand caught a fluttering movement out the corner of his eye. Madame Tibor emerged from a crowd of gypsies by the bar. Her scarves danced in a slight draft as she approached with a mixture of disappointment and hope on her face.

  Brand set the glass down on the bar and turned to meet the fortune teller as she approached.

  “Where’s your husband?”

  She put up a hand to stop him. Her eyes confirmed what Brand feared.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. She brushed a hand at the air and moved away, motioning for him to follow. They went into a back room where men, negroes and gypsies alike, worked in a fevered rush packing items into boxes and barrels.

  Brand stared at the scene. Cases and bags were strewn amidst the people packing dry goods and perishables into crates. The personal bags sat like they’d been discarded, spilling their contents onto the floor. Pocket watches, picture frames, knives, letter openers, tea sets. Bits of lace and fabric. Some old tools rested on a shelf in one wall. Hand planes, hammers, chisels. A long saw. A shorter one hanging on a peg beneath the shelf. A man went to the tools and removed them. He packed them with care into a long wooden box at his feet.

  “You see us preparing,” Madame Tibor said. “For danger. But danger is already here.”

  “When did this start? The Governor hit town two days ago—”

  “Is long time coming, Mitchell Brand. Is not beginning. Now is the end. Is what happens when criminals own city and people are made slaves who think they are free.”

  Brand could barely have put it better himself.

  Chapter 35

  Madame Tibor motioned to Brand again and he followed out into the main room of the speak. The piano was quiet and the musicians were going down the ladder to the cellar, carrying their smaller instruments close to their chests and helping one another hand the larger cases down.

  “Where are they headed?” Brand asked.

  “To railroad. In tunnels. Old city lines are buried after fire. We find them, rebuild them for exploring old city. Now we use them to escape.”

  “Are we joining them or do you have an airship hidden in those scarves?”

  The fortune teller turned dark eyes on Brand and he felt regret rise in his chest.

  “Come, Mitchell Brand. Is now you see what your story is really about.” As she spoke, her scarves lifted away from her neck and swirled around her head like the arms of a marionette. Brand could see no strings, and the shuddering air around her head gave him a good idea of what would come next. He held his booze through a force of will and let the room lift aside like a curtain, revealing again a thousand memories on top of a thousand more. Furniture and firelight swam in and out of focus around indistinct figures, then the room itself faded from view to be replaced by stretches of farmland and cattle.

  Madame Tibor took Brand by the hand and took a step to the side. In the space of that step they crossed the city, her stride covering miles in half a second. Brand’s vision blurred and his head spun. He only kept his liquor down this time because he’d forgotten he had a body to be sick with. All sensation and sound was reduced to a single feeling, a calm like he’d never felt. For that split second, Brand knew what it meant to be in a city, to truly exist within a city and be a crucial part of it.

  Then Madame Tibor let go his hand. He came to a sudden halt in a top floor hotel room downtown, far from the old Village neighborhood. Brand’s vision came around to register a tall white-haired man standing by a window, looking out at the city below. A satchel hung off his left hip. The man turned around as Brand’s gut caught up with him and sent him stumbling for the washroom. He came back out when he was finished and looked the tall man in the eye.

  “You’re Tesla. Aren’t you.”

  “Yes. And your surprise is not unexpected, Mr. Brand. That is, if it is surprise and not revulsion that is responsible for your nausea.”

  Brand took it all in. The hotel room, the gypsy fortune teller who’d just spirited him here from a speak halfway to the other side of the city, and now Tesla. Old and withered after years of proving to the world what no other inventor had dared try. Brand had heard the stories, about the man who never slept or took companionship, despite the many offerings he’d received. Brand knew what the man could do. Without Tesla’s radio power station and the devices he’d rigged up, Brand wouldn’t have had a career as Johnny-on-the-spot with crime scene photos.

  But this man, this frail and almost quaintly pathetic old man with a whispy voice and frills of white hair sprouting from his liver-spotted scalp. This was Tesla.

  “No, it’s not revulsion. I wouldn’t call it surprise either, but then I don’t know what to call it when a gypsy hauls me off my feet and flies me across the city in one step. What would you call it?”

  Tesla seemed taken aback, but then chuckled softly through rounded lips.

  “What do you know about gods?” he asked.

  “Gods? Not much. They’re good for when you need to ask someone for help. They’re better when you need someone to point fingers at for not helping you.”

  Tesla barked a short laugh and his smile widened, though his weathered and wizened face drooped around his mouth, betraying his disappointment. “Your opinion may change shortly.”

  “I’ll lay even money you’re wrong, but go ahead. Try to win me over.”

  “Mr. Brand, certainly a man of your skepticism can agree. Humanity can be its own worst enemy.”

  “Certainly. So why do we need gods in the first place when it’s all on us to make things better or worse?”

  Tesla kept hush, seeming to consider Brand’s question before speaking again.

  “Mr. Brand, humanity needs the gods as much as the gods need humanity,” he said, warming to the conversation now and stepping closer to Brand, moving his hands as he spoke, seeming to grasp words from the air around him. “Each is beholden to the other for existence, and for influence.”

  “Influence? I think you mean power. That’s how it’s been told to me by your mailmen anyway.”

  “Yes, Mr. Brand. Power. The power to act without restraint, to see one’s influence expressed in the world, widely and with purpose. With results.”

  “So where do I fit in here? I’m guessing the gypsy didn’t fly me here to show up the air transport service.”

  Madame Tibor spoke then and Brand turned to face her. />
  “When gods find mortals who match influence, then gods emerge.” Her scarves swam around her head in a whorl now, violent ripples of burnt orange, deep passionate red, blazing sunlight yellow, a swirl here of emerald or sapphire. In each band of color, Brand saw tools and around them the products of their use. Hand tools intermingled with utensils. Around these were pieces of furniture, then rooms to house the furniture, then houses full of rooms. Outward the scarves spun, creating an aurora behind Madame Tibor’s head. Beyond the houses grew cities, and then roads connecting these, forming a web of human activity that stretched into infinity as Brand stared, and wondered.

  “Gods come out from curtain. Possess the mortal and live on earth.”

  Tesla picked up the thread now, leaving Brand to stare between them. “On earth, in possession of a mortal, the gods may act on the world however they so choose. It is the most powerful position a god may claim. It is as close to immortality as either human or god may ever know.”

  Brand stood frozen in place between Madame Tibor’s and Tesla’s words. Nothing they’d said rang true in the way that a gunshot told you a bullet was on the loose. But the gypsy’s scarves kept up their light show, and as the inventor stared at Brand, his face took on a haunted look. His eyes burned with a blue fire. Images floated in the air around Tesla’s head. Spiraling conduits of electricity orbited the cross hatch of schematic diagrams. Ghostly machines operated and revolved around one another, performing anonymous tasks in a smooth cadence, all in time to their movement. Formulae spun about as well, the numbers and symbols danced as they were calculated and recalculated time and time again. At the end, Tesla faded behind the curtain, flickering like a gas jet and then re-emerging, his figure filling in like an electric lamp ablaze with the warm glow of light. Madame Tibor did the same, emerging from the curtain to stand before him with a potency Brand could not deny.

  “Ingenuity, Mr. Brand,” Tesla said.

  “And Necessity,” the gypsy added.

  “The gods guide and advise us these many years,” Tesla went on.

  “How long?” Brand asked.

  “Since last World’s Fair is held in Chicago City,” Madame Tibor replied.

  “The fair? What’s that got to do with it? And why here? Why not Philly or San Francisco? They’ve hosted fairs before.”

  “Chicago City is the natural seat of this nation’s power,” Tesla said. “This city is centrally located on all major shipping and transportation lines. It is the heart of manufacturing and production in the American Territories. Chicago City is the nation with its mix of peoples and enterprises. Raw materials are funneled through her ports and along her rail lines. When people do travel across the territories, they must pass through Chicago City. To control the city is to have every branch of the nation wrapped up like a bundle of sticks held tightly in one’s fist.”

  “And one of these— One of you wants to do this, is that it?”

  Tesla and Madame Tibor nodded.

  “Which one?”

  “Hubris,” the gypsy spat.

  “His influence is legendary in Chicago City,” Tesla said. “He aims to have his insulating self-righteousness invade every heart. Worse, we have learned he is in league with another member of the pantheon, a god whose influence is unmatched by any other in your city or in any of the American Territories.”

  “Who would that be?”

  Tesla answered. “Industry.”

  “Sounds like they want to take us back to presidents and vice-presidents. Somebody should tell them that didn’t work out too well. Lincoln was the last president this country had, and he didn’t exactly leave office. Not on his own.”

  “There are not so many of us here beyond the curtain, Mr. Brand. The reach of the gods extends only as far as humanity allows with their worship and reverence. You can no doubt appreciate that our colleagues, for better or for worse, are willing to do anything for the freedom to walk the earth as we have. Many of them, like Vice and Corruption already enjoy a degree of freedom. Others, like Pride and Shame, would see themselves exalted higher even than Industry. And if he succeeds…”

  “Succeeds at what? You still haven’t told me what we’re up against, and what I saw back in the Village didn’t look like the greatest scheme on the books. What good is a war to a god of indu—” Brand stopped himself as his mind filled the picture in.

  Tesla nodded again. “It is Industry’s wish that the entire nation be devoted to the cycle of production and consumption. Even when a need is lacking, the people will consume. Even when resources have been exhausted, they will produce, sacrificing what they truly need. They will sacrifice even to obtain what is wholly unnecessary. But they will believe otherwise, and so they will exhaust themselves in the pursuit of falsehoods.”

  “Is he out here? Like you?”

  “Yes. The Governor. His army has taken over my factory. Stolen my designs and my inventions. All for his little game of soldiers.”

  “Can’t you get it back? You’ve got to have some way of—”

  “Of what? Fighting a war? That has never been my concern. Ingenuity will leave me soon. He will find another host, or he will wait behind the curtain. Society is run amok with wealth and power now. Humanity has too little time for a man whose truest love is for the power of having ideas, rather than what can be done with them.”

  Brand wanted to sniff at that, but he couldn’t deny the inventor his due. “I’m sorry, then. You deserve better after what you’ve given the world.”

  Tesla acknowledged this with a nod.

  “You said there were two gods working this play. What about the other one? Hubris? Who is he?”

  “I do not know, but it would be someone able to command the sway of the people through coercion, force, or deceit. He will promote his ideas as undeniably just while being, in reality, nothing more than a braggart making a prideful attempt at gaining power.”

  Brand’s mind called up what he’d seen on the street. Soldiers marching lines of helpless citizens like cattle to the slaughterhouse. Bulletins notifying the people. Bulletins marked with a seal like the one he’d read in a broadcast booth the day the Governor came to town.

  “So what’s the play? Where do I come in and how do I help?”

  “You must again be the voice for Chicago City. You must speak for the people, tell them the truth. Tell them what the Governor’s airships and soldiers are doing while the people hide inside their homes. Insulated. Believing themselves unaffected. Believing lies.”

  Tesla reached into the satchel hanging off his hip and pulled out a microphone rig. A coiled cable linked the square mic to a small box mounted on a thick leather belt.

  “This microphone is connected to the transmitter on top of the building you used to work in, Mr. Brand. You may use it to give your broadcasts. I have configured it to interrupt any signals being sent from the building itself, so you may rest assured you will be heard tonight.”

  “How’d you manage that? This thing’s smaller than my shoe shine kit. Where’s the power come from?”

  “My Wardenclyffe towers, Mr. Brand. The Governor may have stolen my factory from me, but the knowledge of how my inventions work remains mine.”

  Brand weighed the device in his hands, then slipped the belt around his waist and fastened it. The mic dangled from the cable until he lifted it and hooked it onto a clasp hanging from the belt. The power box sat at the small of his back and forced him to stand upright with his back slightly arched.

  “Didn’t think about comfort when you made this, did you?”

  Tesla chuckled and placed his hand on Brand’s shoulder. Looking the inventor in the eye, Brand nodded and gave a quick salute. Tesla smiled in return before fading out of sight, leaving only a thin veil of darkness to fall closed behind him.

  A rolling thunderclap shook the ci
ty, sending Brand diving for cover by the bed. Madame Tibor instead walked to the window and stared into the gathering night.

  “It starts now.”

  Brand moved to join her, caution and fear sending his every nerve into a riot of alarm. Outside the hotel the streets were quiet. The city had gone indoors in the middle of the afternoon because of the early curfew. Across the river, in the old neighborhoods they’d just left, Brand saw a burst of firelight, and then another. A stippling of gunfire peppered the sky and Brand saw gunships convening on the old neighborhoods. Fireballs blossomed up from the ground moments later as more gunfire punctuated the darkening sky with deadly starlight.

  Chapter 36

  Emma peeked out from her hiding place. She’d come onto this porch because she saw someone twitch aside a curtain in the house. Then two soldiers had rounded the near corner, just one house away. Emma ducked down and prayed she could escape while the soldiers searched the first house. She watched them go up the steps to the porch. One of them kicked the door in and the other shouted for anyone inside to come out.

  An engine cranked to life nearby and Emma’s heart jumped. Who would be crazy enough to drive through this neighborhood now? The soldiers turned as one to watch the street. A jeep came around the corner and pulled up in front of the house. The driver hailed the two on the porch.

  “Just got word. It’s time to clear out.”

  The two soldiers stepped fast down to the curb and climbed into the jeep. The driver worked the gearshift and the jeep peeled away with a roar and burst of smoke. Emma sat on her haunches until the jeep was well out of sight. The neighborhood felt quiet as a grave, but she knew people remained hidden indoors. She glanced behind her at the curtained window. A child’s eye held her gaze for a moment before a mother’s or father’s hand flicked the curtain shut. Emma heard hissed reprimands retreat into the house and out of earshot.