Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded

by Jeff VanderMeer

  JOHNNY HAD LIVED his whole twelve years in Dirtville, but even he knew it for a useless dustbowl of a place, like a dried-out patch of prairie grass clinging to the thin, lifeless soil. The fields were all but barren, livestock too scrawny to be worth the effort of eating. Only one shop was still open and its shelves were mostly filled with air. Since the railroad had changed route, taking the trains and travellers with it, half the buildings had been torn down for trade or firewood, or just to get at the prairie dogs nested underneath.

  Johnny watched as Dog-Valley Dan slowly paced the main street of Dirtville, his strides weighty with resolve. Thirty-seven cartridge cases glinted on a thong round Dan’s neck, one for every man who’d dared face him in a shoot-out. Thirty-seven corpses, rotting in dusty frontier graveyards.

  Dan was an infamous outlaw, wanted in seven states for his exploits on the gunfighting circuit. The last man who’d stopped in Dirtville, a salesman named Hicky, had brought a stack of newspapers and penny dreadfuls describing the exploits of these men, and Johnny had mastered just enough of his letters to read those stories. Like the rest of the townspeople he trembled in anticipation at Dan’s arrival.

  As Dan stalked the wide, sandy street folks peered nervously out through flimsy wooden shop-fronts. A small child, running into the open, was whisked away by his mother, a shrew-faced woman in a faded bonnet. The only sounds were the clink of Dan’s spurs and the creaking of the general store sign. Johnny held his breath and gripped his catapult tight to his chest.

  A figure in a wide black Stetson emerged from the rickety saloon. Behind him the barkeep, Mr. Kent, peered hawk-nosed over the top of the still-swinging doors with their peeling paint. The man in the hat turned to face Dan, fat gloved hand dangling below his holster.

  “You the Cast-Iron Kid?” Dan asked, his words echoing down the empty street.

  The figure in the Stetson nodded, steam rising from his wide shoulders in the midday heat.

  “I hear tell you’re a coward, boy,” Dan drawled his usual lazy provocation. “Gonna prove me wrong?”

  The Cast-Iron Kid’s face was wrapped in impassive shadow. With a hiss he strode into the middle of the street and turned to face Dan. The silence stretched out, long and tense, as dust blew against the boarded-up storefronts and a tumbleweed rolled down the road.

  “Draw.” The Kid’s voice emerged, low and scratchy.

  Before the words could hit the floor Dan’s pistol was in his hand, bucking and roaring, chambers spinning as he let fly. Six sharp clangs rang out as bullets hit the Kid and ricocheted off into the distance. Dan stared, slack-jawed, as for the first time in his brutal life an opponent failed to fall beneath a hail of lead.

  Slowly, the Kid’s coat slid to the ground, revealing a wide chest of gleaming grey, six shallow dents where the bloodstains should have been. He doffed his hat and a cylindrical head reflected the sun’s rays, ridged and flat-topped like an old tin can with dark, gaping holes for a mouth and eyes. Steam emerged from a short smokestack on his back, and every movement was accompanied by a hiss of oiled pistons or whir of hidden gears.

  “My turn,” came the crackling gramophone voice as the Kid’s hinged fingers reached for his gun.

  Sooner or later, every gunslinger and fist-fighter came to Dirtville, drawn by the reputation of the Cast-Iron Kid. Word was the Kid had never been beat, and for the fast-draw fanatics of the Western Territory, that sounded an awful lot like a challenge. Johnny figured no other boy saw so many famous faces, not even the sons of politicians in Washington or rich business folks up in New York. From the stoop of Elmer Klief’s porch he watched the Kid take on Desolation Sal and Wilson Payne, Gettysburg Phil and Running Hammer, leaving each one cold in the dirt. One time, the sheriff of neighbouring Harper’s Fall raised a posse of a dozen men and rode them into Dirtville to bring justice for those the Kid had killed. They lynched the metal man out by the old well, hanging him from an oak so dry and shrivelled it barely even bent beneath Cast-Iron’s weight. But he soon got bored of swinging, tore the improvised gallows clean out of the earth and beat the posse into a rich dark smear. That fall, crops grew round the old well for the first time in years.

  Some fights took it out of the Kid, but he always got patched back up. If Johnny kept quiet he got to sit in the smithy while the town’s elders, like old Mr. Moore the watchmaker and Heinrich Altman the railroad engineer, tinkered with the Kid’s innards to keep him in shape. They cleaned pipes and calibrated gears while Jim Roe’s wife, Ellen, who everyone knew was the real strength at the smithy, beat the dents out of that shining carapace. As the years passed Johnny got older and the adults a little greyer, but old Cast-Iron stayed just the same.

  The Stranger rode into town on a white horse named Ghost, past the derelict station and the tiny, cramped graveyard. There was little soil to be dug this side of the mountains, and most of it had to be kept for the malnourished crops. But that didn’t stop folks dying, so the gravedigger had taken to planting the deceased vertically, feet first in deep, narrow tunnels. The bleached crosses clustered tight on Boot Hill.

  Johnny sat by the side of the road, stretching out the cord on his homemade catapult. As The Stranger approached Johnny let fly, shattering one of the old bottles perched on a nearby fence. Then he reached down into the dry dirt, fingers seeking another good-sized pebble.

  “That’s mighty fine shooting,” The Stranger said. “Reckon you must be the best shot this side of Tombstone.”

  Johnny loosed a sharp flint which clattered ineffectively off the fence. He shook his head.

  “Try these,” The Stranger said, pulling a handful of ball-bearings from his bag and placing them beside the boy. Johnny picked one up, feeling the cold lead weight in his palm.

  “What’re they for?” he asked.

  The Stranger shrugged.

  “Engine stuff,” he said. “I had a buddy used to work the railroads, gave me them for luck.”

  “Don’t you need ‘em?” Johnny asked.

  The Stranger looked round at the barren valley full of pale, weather-beaten buildings with cracked windows and loose tiles.

  “Not as much as you, I reckon,” he said.

  “You here for Cast-Iron?” Johnny asked.

  The Stranger nodded and pulled two dimes from the pocket of his vest. “What can you tell me about him?”

  The boy pursed his lips, sucking thoughtfully.

  “He’s real iron,” he said, accepting the coins. “Ma says the menfolk built him to draw folks in, on account of the railroad don’t run through here no more, and there ain’t no other way to make a living round these parts.”

  He poked a finger through a hole in his oversized shirt.

  “This here came off of Oklahoma Slim. Mr. Klief got his pants, on account of his old breeches didn’t have no backside left to ‘em, and Sally Altman got his jacket to keep her warm in winter. He had a whole bag of gold too. The mayor took it to the traders at Harper’s Fall, got us all manner of grain and tinned food. When we heard you was coming Ma said we’d eat well this winter.”

  The Stranger rose slowly to his feet and stood gazing at the distant hills. The wind blew long, dark curls of hair across his stern face. There was a long silence, broken only by the rusty creaking of the general store sign.

  “What’s your name, boy?” The Stranger said at last.

  “Johnny,” the boy replied.

  “Thanks, Johnny,” The Stranger said and raised his hat before turning back towards his horse.

  Johnny plucked one of the lead balls from the dirt, rolled it around in his grubby fingers. He glanced nervously up the street into town, but nothing moved except the tumbleweeds. Still clutching the ball-bearing he ran after The Stranger and whispered conspiratorially in his ear.

  “Bullets bounce off of him.”

  The Stranger nodded, tethered his horse, and strode up the long street into town. Stopping outside the general store he rolled up his sleeves, unhooked his spurs from his boots, and plucked a two
-by-four from the barrel by the door. With a calm, quiet tread he stepped into the shadow of the saloon and placed himself next to the creaking door, back pressed up against the wall, plank raised firmly in two calloused hands. There he waited.

  After twenty minutes Johnny heard the rattle of the bar door followed by a whirring of gears. The Stranger hefted the plank up to his shoulder and, as the Kid’s looming shadow passed, swung out with all his might. There was a clang like a cathedral bell and the gleaming barrel head flew away, leaving steam pouring from between shiny shoulders. The Stranger struck again and again, splinters flying as he battered the Kid with his improvised club, sending the dented body reeling back into the street, dust spurting beneath each heavy footfall. With a thud that echoed down the whole valley Cast-Iron’s gleaming shell crashed to the ground, a lone gearwheel tumbling out of the gaping neckhole and rolling to a halt at Johnny’s feet.

  The Stranger cast aside the splintered remnants of his club and leaned down over the heap of dusty metal, sweat dribbling down his face in the noonday heat.

  “That’s for my buddy Dan,” The Stranger said, mouth finally lifting in the hollow image of a smile. But his grin turned to a grimace as the headless body stirred, rising from the packed ochre earth and reaching out towards him. Cold steel hands clamped round The Stranger’s throat, tightening and twisting with ruthless mechanical might. The man’s eyes bulged, foam fringing his mouth, and even though Johnny looked away he could not escape those desperate rasping breaths or the final sickening snap.

  Johnny took one last look at the graveyard, thinking of all the wanderers and lawmen he’d seen dropped into its pits as he grew up. Sure, some of them had been mean, and more had been villains of the West’s worst sort, but that didn’t make it right. In one hand he clutched his catapult, a sturdy frame of wood-scraps and rat-glue, an object of his own making, not scavenged from some poor sap sleeping on Boot Hill. In the other he hefted the thing he’d gone to Tombstone for, trading in his fifteenth birthday hat. Sheriff Peterson’s hat, still smelling of hair-cream and blood.

  He stood outside the saloon and called for the Cast-Iron Kid, called him every dark curse-name ever muttered and more he’d dreamed up on the long lonely journey back to Dirtville. At last the doors parted and the Kid strode into the street, piston innards hissing.

  “What is it, little Johnny?” the gramophone voice asked.

  “It’s my turn,” Johnny declared. “I’m calling you out, like those other folks did.”

  The Kid let out a long, mirthless laugh.

  “This how you get to become a man, is it?” he asked. “Well, little Johnny, let’s see what make of man you are.”

  Johnny pulled back on the sling, rubber straining, scrap-wood creaking, the smells of sweat and rat-glue cutting through his fear. The Kid started to laugh again, the sound circling and repeating. Then he fell silent as something struck his chest with a clang, a wide iron bar marked “N” and “S” at either end. Gears froze as the magnet’s power flowed through them, sticking each one to the next. The street was filled with tinkling and whirring as delicate springs and ratchets caught fast and snapped. The Cast-Iron Kid stood motionless, joints stuck in place, steam seeping through the gaps. His firebox backed up and choked on its own fumes, sending clouds of soot-black smoke pouring from his mouth and eyes. Fingers spasmed, stretched back on themselves and burst apart in a hail of tiny articulated plates. Then with a thud that echoed back from the mountains the Kid fell forwards, showering Johnny with dry, lifeless desert dust.

  There was no space left in the graveyard for the Cast-Iron Kid, so they melted him down and sold him as engine parts. Years later, folks passing through Harper’s Fall would tell of the sheriff there who sat on his stoop running two ball-bearings round his hand, one of worn lead, the other of cold cast iron.

  Machine Maid

  Margo Lanagan

  MARGO LANAGAN’S most recent novel, Tender Morsels, was a Printz Honor Book and won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Her collection of speculative fiction short stories, Black Juice, was also widely acclaimed; won two World Fantasy Awards, two Ditmar, and two Aurealis awards; was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and also won a Printz Honor. Her collection Red Spikes was a CBCA Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize and longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Margo lives in Sydney, Australia, and maintains a blog at amongamidwhile.blogspot.com. Of “Machine Maid,” she writes, “For this story I did a bit of research about automatons, which along with dolls and clowns have to be some of the creepiest things people have invented. The woman isolated on a bush property is an oft-used character in Australian fiction; I just decided to give her the intellectual curiosity and the means to fight back against her situation.”

  WE CAME TO Cuttajunga through the goldfields; Mr. Goverman was most eager to show me the sites of his successes.

  They were impressive only in being so very unprepossessing. How could such dusty earth, such quantities of it piled up discarded by the road and all up and down the disembowelled hills, have yielded anything of value? How did this devastated place have any connection with the metal of crowns and rings and chains of office, and with the palaces and halls where such things were worn and wielded, on the far side of the globe?

  Well, it must, I said to myself, as I stood obediently at the roadside, feeling the dust stain my hems and spoil the shine of my Pattison’s shoes. See how much attention is being paid it, by this over-layer of dusty men shoveling, crawling, winching up buckets or baskets of broken rock, or simply standing, at rest from their labours as they watch one of their number return, proof in his carriage and the cut of his coat that they are not toiling here for nothing. There must be something of value here.

  “This hill is fairly well dug out,” said Mr. Goverman, “and there was only ever wash-gold from ancient watercourses here in any case. ‘Tis good for nobody but Chinamen now.” And indeed I saw several of the creatures, in their smockish clothing and their umbrella-ish hats, each with his long pigtail, earnestly working at a pile of tailings in the gully that ran by the road.

  The town was hardly worthy of the name, it was such a collection of sordid drinking-palaces, fragile houses and luckless miners lounging about the lanes. Bowling alleys there were, and a theatre, and stew-houses offering meals for so little, one wondered how the keepers turned a profit. And all blazed and fluttered and showed its patches and cracks in the unrelenting sunlight.

  The only woman I saw leaned above the street on a balcony railing that looked set to give way beneath her generous arms. She was dressed with profound tastelessness and she smoked a pipe, as a gypsy or a man would, surveying the street below and having no care that it saw her so clearly. I guessed her to be Mrs. Bawden, there being a painted canvas sign strung between the veranda posts beneath her feet: “MRS. HUBERT BAWDEN/Companions Live and Electric.” Her gaze went over us as my husband drew my attention to how far one could see across the wretched diggings from this elevation. I felt as if the creature had raked me into disarray with her nails. She would know exactly the humiliations Mr. Goverman had visited on me in the night; she would be smiling to herself at my prim and upright demeanour now, at the thought of what had been pushed at these firm-closed lips while the animal that was my husband pleaded and panted above.

  On we went, thank goodness, and soon we were viewing a panorama similar to that of the dug-out hill, only the work here involved larger machinery than the human body. Parties of men trooped in and out of several caverns dug into the hillside, pushing roughly made trucks along rails between the mines and the precarious, thundering houses where the stamping-machines punished the gold from the obdurate quartz. My husband had launched into a disquisition on the geological feature that resulted in this hill’s having borne him so much fruit, and if truth be told it gave me some pleasure to imagine the forces he described at their work in their unpeopled age, heaving and pressing, breaking and slic
ing and finally resting, their uppermost layers washed and smoothed by rains, while the quartz-seam underneath, split away and forced upward from its initial deposition, held secret in its cracks and crevices its gleamless measure of gold.

  But we must move on, to reach our new home before dark. The country grew ever more desolate, dry as a whisper and grey, grey under cover of this grey, disorderly forest. Unearthly birds the size of men stalked among the ragged tree-trunks, and others, lurid, shrieking, flocked to the boughs. In places the trees were cut down and their bodies piled into great windrows; set alight, and with an estate’s new house rising half-built from the hill or field beyond, they presented a scene more suggestive of devastation by war than of the hopefulness and ambition of a youthful colony.