Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded

by Jeff VanderMeer

  I went with them, silent, stunned that it all had happened just as I wished. The sky opened up so widely above the carriage, I feared we would fall out into it, these four black-coated crows of men and me lace-petticoated among them, like a bit of cloud, like a puff of train-steam disappearing. Now that they had cluttered up my clear knowledge with their stories, they respected my silence; only the reverend, who could not be suspected of impropriety, occasionally glanced at my stiff face and patted my gloved hand.

  At Cuttajunga Mrs. Hodds ran at me weeping, and Mr. Brightwell turned his hat in his hands and covered it with muttered condolences. Then that was over, and Mrs. Hodds did more cluttering, more exclaiming, and told me what she had had to clean, until one of the black coats sharply interrupted her laundry listing: “Mrs. Goverman hardly wants to hear this, woman.”

  I did not require sedating; I had not become hysterical; I had not shed a tear. But then Mary Grace became fretful, and I took her and Lilty into the study—”But you must not say a word, Lilty, not a word,” I told her. And as I fed my little daughter, there looking down into her soft face, her mouth working so busy and greedily, her eyes closed in supreme confidence that the milk would continue, forever if it were required—that was when the immense loneliness of my situation hollowed out around me, and of my pitiable husband’s, who had retired to the room now above us, and in his horror—for he must have realised what I had done, and who I therefore was—felt his lifeblood ebb away.

  Still I did not weep, but my throat and my chest hardened with occluded tears, and I thought—I welcomed the thought—that my heart might stop from the strain of containing them.

  Abigail, Abigail: the name kept flying from people’s mouths like an insect, distracting me from my thoughts. The pursuit of Abigail preoccupied everyone. I let it, for it prevented them asking other questions; it prevented them seeing through my grief to my guilt.

  In the night I rose from my bed. Lilty was asleep on the bedchamber couch, on the doctor’s advice and the reverend’s, in case I should need her in the state of confusion into which my sudden widowhood had plunged me. I took the candle downstairs, and along the hall to the back of the house.

  I should have brought a rag, I thought. A damp rag. But in any case, she will be so bloodied, her bodice, her skirts—it will have all run down. Did he leave the piece in her mouth? I wondered. Will I find it there? Or did he retrieve it and have it with him, in his handkerchief, or in his bed, bound against him with the wrappings nearer where it belonged? It was not a question one could ask Captain Jollyon, or even Dr. Stone.

  I opened the door of the charging chamber. There was no smudge or spot on or near the cabinet door that I could see on close examination by candlelight.

  I opened the cabinet. “Clarissa?” I said in my surprise, and she began her initiation-lubrication sequence, almost as if in pleasure at seeing me and being greeted, almost the way Mary Grace’s limbs came alive when she heard my voice, her smoky-grey eyes seeking my face above her cradle. The chamber buzzed and crawled with the sounds of the doll’s coming to life, and I could identify each one, as you recognise the gait of a familiar, or the cough he gives before knocking on your parlour door, or his cry to the stable boy as he rides up out of the afternoon, after weeks away.

  “Clarissa: Stand,” I said, and I made her turn, a full circle so that I could assure myself that not a single drop of blood was on any part of her clothing; then, that her garments had not been washed, for there was the tea-drop I had spilt upon her bodice myself during my studies. I might have unbuttoned her; I might have brought the candle close to scrutinise her breasts, her teeth, for blood not quite cleansed away, but I was prevented, for here came Lilty down the stairs, rubbing her sleepy eyes.

  “Oh, ma’am! I was frightened for you! Come, you’d only to wake me, ma’am. You’ve no need to resort to mechanical people. What is it you were wanting? She’s no good warming milk for you, that one—you know that.”

  And on she scolded, so fierce and gentle in the midnight, so comforting to my confusion—which was genuine now, albeit not sourced where she thought, not where any of them thought—that I allowed her to put the doll away, to lead me to the kitchen, to murmur over me as she warmed and honeyed me some milk.

  “The girl Abigail,” I said when I was calmer, into the steam above the cup. “Is there any news of her?”

  “Don’t you worry, Mrs. Goverman.” Lilty clashed the pot into the wash basin, slopped some water in. Then she sat opposite me, her jaw set, her fists red and white on the table in front of her. “They will find that Abigail. There is only so many people in this country yet that she can hide among. And most of them would sell their mothers for a penny or a half-pint. Don’t you worry.” She leaned across and squeezed my cold hand with her hot, damp one. “They will track that girl down. They will bring her to justice.”

  The Unbecoming of Virgil Smythe

  Ramsey Shehadeh

  RAMSEY SHEHADEH writes software by day and short stories by night. His fiction has appeared in Weird Tales and Fantasy & Science Fiction. He lives near Washington D.C., and blogs at www.doodleplex.com. Of this story, he writes, “Some time ago, I became obsessed with Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, and decided that what I needed to do was write an updated version of that story. It would take place on a similar train, with similar characters working their way through a similar mystery, and contain only a bare minimum of interstellar monsters. It didn’t quite work out the way I’d planned: the train survived, but my Edwardian characters shaded inexorably Victorian, the monsters gained a voice and a cause, and the simple mystery morphed into a fractured tale of causality subverted. All of which seems, in retrospect, entirely appropriate.”

  1: THE LADY ON THE PLATFORM

  THE CLOCK ON the platform struck eleven, and Philip George Herbert’s head, sinking slowly down the front of his body, shot back up to its summit and spun around to regard the clockface. “Oh, felicitous tidings, m’lady!” he said. “The train will arrive at any moment. Your gentle patience is rewarded at last!”

  “Yes, thank you, Philip,” said Chloe, stiffly. “I too can read the time.”

  “It is my pleasure, m’lady.” He trundled into her field of vision, and smiled up at her. She thought it was a smile, at any rate. It was often difficult to tell. Dromedons did not have mouthes, as such: rather cunning arrangements of flesh and orifice that suited the purpose. Ragged ochre fins ran down the sides of his head, and flecks of purple mica swam in the greys of his eyes. “May I fetch you a stool, m’lady? You must be weary indeed.”

  “Thank you, no.”

  “It would give Mademoiselle’s humble servant great pleasure.”

  “No,” she snapped. And then, in a more moderate tone: “Thank you.” Her patience, in point of fact, was wearing thin. She’d spent six weary months in the company of Philip George Herbert. He was obsequious to the point of mockery: always shuffling underfoot, offering to carry this, or fetch that, or brush arrant flakes of dandruff off of her shoulders. Always pointing out puddles whose “upsplash might soil the hem of m’lady’s vestments,” or prowling ahead when she went out to take the air, exhorting the crowds of dromedons she inevitably encountered to make way for the auspicious lady. Chloe had instructed him on many occasions not to refer to her in that manner, but Philip George Herbert persisted; and so she often found herself striding mortified through throngs of parted dromedons, feeling keenly the dull resentment burning in their dull eyes.

  She’d arrived in Hampshire Bubble six months ago, at the behest of its Viceroy, and her father, Lord Peter Gammen. She was to be his helpmeet and social factotum, arranging dinners at the manse, standing in at ribbon-cutting ceremonies, and generally serving as the ornament at his side. Despite appearances, it was difficult work. One had to be beautiful at all times, and lively, and skilled at that species of conversation wherein wit obscured the necessary banality. All very exciting, at first, but when the novelty waned her days became f
irst a chore, and then a torment.

  It wasn’t just the dromedons. Nor was it the constant crush of duty, or the tedium, or the tiresome provinciality of the colonials. All of these annoyances played their part, of course, but she was principally put out by the shocking impertinence of time. She’d lived her entire life in the sequential world, where one could expect events to occur in some sort of order. Out here in the between, events had a much more liberal view of their responsibilities.

  To be fair, the causality bubble that surrounded Hampshire colony was generally quite successful in enforcing the natural order of cause and effect. Even so, Chloe sometimes found herself arriving at market before she’d left the house, or finishing afternoon tea before she’d poured it. Once, she glanced at the hall mirror and saw an old crone staring back at her, poached skin and age spots and thin hair and sunken eyes, tendons standing out in her neck like hawsers. The image was gone as quickly as it appeared, but it occasioned the first of many tearful appeals to her father: send me home.

  Lord Gammen was, for all his vices, a doting and considerate father, who could not bear the sight of his daughter’s unhappiness. And so, in due course, her entreaties had the desired effect: her passage back into the coherent universe was booked on the Taurus Express. In a first-class berth, of course.

  The sound of a whistle clove the murmuring silence of the platform. She turned, with all the others, to study the mouth of the tunnel. It was a simple, unadorned brick archway, a hemisphere of darkness embedded in the side of the mountain that towered over the station. The track that issued from its mouth was real, as was the archway’s intricate brickwork, but all of the rest—the mountain, the cottonball clouds floating in the bright blue sky, the sky itself— was illusory, an anti-chaos simulacrum manufactured by frightfully complex machinery sunk into the weft of the bubblewall. It was a convincing illusion, and Chloe often found it possible to forget the insanity that it concealed.

  Presently, a rush of steam blurted out of the tunnel, and hung roiling before the wall. There was something faintly disquieting in the way the steam moved, something slick and undulant, a species of incorporeal serpentry. Chloe pursed her lips in distaste, but did not look away.

  And then, with a deafening blast of its whistle, the train burst through the steam and lanced into the station, rippling the hem of her skirts and upsetting her hat. She put a steadying hand on its crown and watched the cars blow by: engine, lounges, dining cars, sleepers, caboose—all gleaming black metal, red and green striping, brass fittings.

  “Goodness,” she whispered. “What a lovely sight.”

  “Not so lovely as m’lady,” said the dromedon, each word sodden with the usual unctuous flattery. Chloe rounded on him, her patience spent at last.

  And froze.

  For where the dromedon had been there was now a space of grey primordial nothingness, and in that nullity she saw the whole span of the universe, past, present, and future, compressed into a space both absent and infinite.

  She went mad.

  2: THE CONDUCTOR IN FIRST CLASS

  Virgil Smythe was hurrying down the length of the sleeper car, peeking round the teetering stack of linens in his arms, when he heard the scream. He bent and peered out the window, at the platform, where a lady of quality lay writhing on the ground, scrabbling frantically at her person. A ring of gawkers was already forming.

  Virgil did not recognize the woman. In fact, he was quite sure that he’d never met her: not in this life, nor the previous one. Nevertheless, he knew her. Further: he knew her intimately.

  This made no sense, but he had no time to puzzle through these imponderables. He turned around, braced the linens against the wall, and knocked on Mr. Renault’s door.

  It opened, and Mr. Renault peered out, a round, aged faced ringed in a faintly angelic aureole of sparse white hair. “Ah, Terrence,” he said. “You have come.”

  “Forgive the delay, Mr. Renault. I had some difficulty locating the items you requested. Will these serve?”

  Mr. Renault opened his door all the way and studied the linens. “They are not quite the shade of green I’d hoped for, Terrence. They have a faint aquamarine quality to them, do they not? I believe I requested something in the chartreuse family.”

  “Indeed you did, sir. But I’m afraid we have nothing in that vein. The only other shade I could find was a dark forest green.”

  Mr. Renault backed away and put his hands up in horror. “Oh good lord, no,” he said. “I could never sleep on a forest green. Simply loathsome color. Much worse than the ecru horrors that clothe my bed at present.”

  “May I make up your room then, sir?”

  Mr. Renault chewed on his lower lip, considering. “I suppose so,” he said. “I shall probably manage an uneasy slumber, though this aquamarine will likely make a mash of my bowels. Which are, as you know, extraordinarily sensitive to the slightest upset, Terrence.”

  “Indeed, sir,” said Virgil. Bells were ringing up and down the length of the car. Virgil was by now devoting all of his energies to masking his impatience, a skill at which he excelled. He’d spent this life catering to the odd whims of the unreasonably wealthy, and embracing their eccentric obsessions as his own. And he’d spent his previous life indulging in these selfsame whims and obsessions. There was a time when he’d stood on the opposite end of these sorts of colloquies, making irrational demands with the blithe insouciance of a monarch dropping edicts.

  That was before the catastrophe, of course.

  Virgil Smythe unbecame himself in a dingy apartment in Yorkshire Bubble, in the year of our Lord 2503.

  It began—as all such tragedies begin—with ambition. From the beginning, Virgil knew that it was his destiny to become a concert pianist. He taught himself how to play at age eight, and had mastered Rachmaninov’s Third by age ten, Mozart’s piano concertos by twelve, Beethoven’s entire canon by thirteen.

  All of which would seem to presage a brilliant career, save for one unfortunate impediment: his monstrous lack of talent. All of the music he played, he played very, very badly. Indeed, the last of his teachers, a nasty old German with sallow breath and Promethean eyebrows, suggested that Virgil wouldn’t recognize talent if it tapped him on the shoulder and introduced itself.

  But Virgil was wealthy, impatient, and obsessed. At eighteen, he decided that if his destiny refused to come to him, he would simply have to hunt it down.

  And so he left his home and ventured into the realm of fungible reality known as the bubbleworlds, seeking a chaos wizard named Angstrom Jones, who—it was said—could mine the nether-region of unattached causality between the bubbles, and reshape desire into reality. Jones was something of a mythical figure in the sequential universe, and many of the stories surrounding him were plainly farcical. But if even a tenth of the powers ascribed to him were real, he would be able to grant Virgil his dreams.

  He found Angstrom after many months of fruitless searching, in a tenement in Yorkshire Bubble. Or rather, he found a drunken and disheveled old man who had once been Angstrom, but was now a broken-down derelict with no prospects and only a tenuous attachment to life. Virgil spent many weeks nursing him back into some semblance of health and sobriety, and many weeks more convincing him to perform the service he required.

  The transformation took place in Mr. Angstrom’s filthy apartment. They sat on the floor, cross-legged, while the wizard chanted himself into some sort of trance. When he opened his eyes, he seemed a different person: preternaturally calm, supremely confident. He curled his hand into a claw and tore a slit in the world and withdrew from it a small dancing something. It was golden or leaden or silver, liquid or solid, brilliant or dull. It was an orb, or it was a rod, or it was a box. Or it was all of these things. Or none of them.

  Virgil could not look at it for very long. It made his mind hurt.

  “This ore,” said Angstrom, “is a distillate of pure, unassigned potential. It is reality so primitive and unformed that it can be shaped into anyth
ing. How am I to shape yours?”

  “Into the best pianist that humanity has ever known,” said Virgil.

  “This is difficult.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Virgil.

  Angstrom nodded, gravely, and began to do something complex with his hands. The ore warped and shuddered, flashed and rumbled. Virgil looked away again, but the room about him began to change too: it melted and reformed, it slid into and out of existence, it guttered. When the wizard spoke again, his voice was small, distant, and frightened. “Oh dear,” he said.

  And then the world broke into a billion pieces, and skittered away on ticking spiderlegs.

  Virgil awoke on a tiny bed in a tiny apartment in Calcutta Bubble, feeling very strange indeed. He rose, ran a hand through his hair, and then studied himself in the mirror that hung over a small dresser near the door. The face that looked back at him was not his. It was narrow and hungry and a little haggard. Eyes that should have been blue were brown. His finely sculpted aquiline nose was puggish now, his blonde hair brown.