by Wol-vriey
Alice’s Adventures in Steamland
The Clockwork Goddess
By Wol-vriey
Edited by Arthur Gelsinger
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Contents
Book One: Oldwoman Girl in New York
Part One: The Mad Hatter
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Part Two: Attack on New York
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Part Three: Prince Jackson
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Part Four: The Ripper
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Book Two: Alice Across America
Part One: Traveling Lighter and Heavier than Air
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Part Two: Traveling in Situ
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Part Three: The Mech-Sioux
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Book Three: The Clockwork Goddess
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Book One: Oldwoman Girl in New York
Part One: The Mad Hatter
Chapter 1
Victorian America, 1867
The train billowed steam as it chugged into New York.
Catching a glimpse of a Goodyear blimp advertising the new four-speed bicycle, Alice Sin heaved a sigh of relief. She’d made it to the capital without any air strikes. Back in Chicago, she’d heard endless horror stories of travelers being blown to bits by bombs dropped from Texan military airships.
As they crossed the Hudson Bridge, Alice peered out her window at the barges floating on the river below. It was Sunday, so as usual, everyone had made for the river immediately after church service. Little picnics had begun to sprout up along the banks.
Alice Sin was petite, brunette, and beautiful. She may have looked innocent, but was extremely far from it, being a recently retired prostitute. She expected her ‘little girl’ looks to take her far in her new vocation – assassin for hire.
Much less sex, much more money.
“Ticket please, miss.”
Alice handed the conductor her ticket. He was a March hare, a species filling any job that permitted marching, which they were obsessed with. They also made up most of the army and police force. Their obsession with marching was hard to explain, since hopping was their natural form of locomotion.
“From Chicago then, are you miss?”
“Yes, sir Hare,” Alice replied politely, putting on her best ‘lost girl’ face. “I’m here visiting my sick aunt, Belinda.”
The hare stroked its whiskers and gazed at her sympathetically. “I hope she feels better soon,” it said.
“Me too. Thank you, sir Hare.”
The March hare smiled a buck-toothed grin at Alice. It then produced a gold pocket watch (another idiosyncrasy of its species) and checked the time.
“Oh dear dear dear me,” it said worriedly. “I’m late, so so so late. If I don’t finish checking tickets soon, I’ll never make it to the dinner carriage in time for tea!”
With that, it quickly thrust the ticket back into Alice’s hands, turning its attention to the white rabbit seated opposite her.
Chapter 2
Alice Sin was in New York to kill Lord Busybody. Renowned in equal measure for his huge hat and odd scientific inventions, the lord was younger brother to the Queen of Hearts, ruler of the Queendom of New York.
Alice held no personal grudge against Lord Busybody. He’d neither raped her, nor had he availed himself of her stress-relieving services and refused to pay afterwards. She’d been hired to kill him by his wife, Lady Busybody – the Duchess Vain.
The reason was as follows.
The duchess had married Lord Busybody simply for the throne, knowing that he would succeed to it when his elder sister, the queen, finally died. Their eldest sibling, Anna, already ruled the state of Texas, a queendom comprising the southern half of Victorian America.
The problem, which became apparent after the duchess had been married to Lord Busybody for twenty-five years, was that the queen gave no indication that she ever planned to die – from causes either natural or accidental. She was the very picture of health, and many were the food tasters in her employ.
Being impatient for power, the duchess began pressuring her husband to ‘assist’ in his sister’s ‘terminal exit’ from power.
“Listen Dudley,” she’d said, looking at him sternly, “We . . . I . . . simply cannot wait forever for old fuddy-duddy to expire. You’re a scientist, so don’t tell me you can’t do anything about it!”
She’d suggested many such anythings in the past. “A chemical potion should suffice, dear – perhaps some poisoned sweetmeats, or a deadly perfume?”
They’d been in his laboratory, a place filled with bubbling beakers and smoking test tubes slurping decanted acids over metal surfaces. On one table lay a dissected cat carcass. A mechanical man lay gathering dust on another. A steam engine he’d built for the robot did work, but the amount of coal required to boil the water to generate the steam made it too heavy to perform even the most basic of tasks.
Lord Busybody was horrified by his wife’s suggestion. His huge hat quivered atop his head, as if it too were afraid.
“You seriously can’t be serious Marie,” he said. “Look,” he continued, trying to dissuade her, “even if we did kill Victoria, the succession goes to Jackson, not me.”
“Not directly, true. But no one wants Jackson as king of New York anyway; you know that as well as I do.”
Lord Busybody sighed. Marie was right on that point. Though he dearly loved his elder sister, this affection did not extend to her son Jackie. Prince Jackson was a scoundrel and a rogue – a total cad by all accounts.
Rather worrisome was the fact that, to date, no one had ever seen the crown prince in the company of a woman.
“Jackson’s a fag, okay?” Marie reminded her husband. “No one wants him as ruler. Not because they care who he screws, but because there’d be no successor. No girlfriends equals no wife equals no sex equals no kids equals no future king or queen.”
She smiled at her husband as she said this. “You and I already have kids – the succession’s assured. Look here, we’ll be doing the queendom a favor. After knocking off your sister, we’ll break her bad egg as well. No one will be sad to see him go.”
“No, I’m not doing it,” Lord Busybody said, after a moment’s consideration. “And if you ever suggest this to me again, Marie, I’ll tell Victoria. You know she’s always looking for more heads to add to her collection . . .”
Marie knew better than to argue with him when he had that look in his eyes. Determined to have her way in unseating her sister-in-law, however, she resorted to the favorite underhand persuasive tactic of the fairer sex – i.e. no sex.
Lord Busybody loved his wife. He’d never have reported her anyway – he simply wished she’d shut up and leave him to his scientific pursuits. But her refusing him sex was overdoing it. After two months of watching her strip naked each night, rouging her
breasts till they looked like ripe apples, and then going to sleep with a knife in her hand, Dudley Busybody had had enough. He moved both her and her luggage out of the house, shipping her to their villa in Chicago, explaining that she could return home ‘only when she gave up this silliness of hers and was willing to resume fulfilling her wifely duties’.
That had been two years ago. A stubborn woman used to having her own way, Marie Busybody refused to back down, so her husband left her in Chicago, asking his sister to find her some ‘charitable works’ to perform for the queendom there.
The Queen of Hearts considered her younger brother’s wife a puritan prude. She wondered how the pair had ever managed to make their three children in the first place.
“Maybe in one of his test-tubes,” Prince Jackson once joked.
“Don’t say that about your uncle Dudley,” she’d rebuked him half-heartedly, before bursting out laughing. “You know Jackie, you might be on to something there . . .”
As her personal joke on Marie, the queen sent her a sealed letter assigning her to ‘work with Chicago’s women of ill-repute, showing them the mortal moral error of spreading their legs for less than marital and childbirth rewards, and bringing their sexual organs back to the path of puritan truth’ – i.e. she was to save the souls of Chicago’s prostitutes, finding them all loving husbands.
Marie realized she’d been railroaded into a dead end, shut out of New York’s aristocratic society for good. She was incensed, but with the queen’s stamp on her new ‘job’, she realized there was nothing she could do. Except maybe killing her husband as revenge . . .
The thing was, his murder had to appear totally accidental – maybe something to do with a scientific mishap, or one of his machines malfunctioning. While paying lip service to saving Chicago’s prostitutes, she spent most of her time searching for a suitable person to carry out her plan.
Marie Busybody stumbled upon Alice Sin one day, working in a brothel.
Alice’s first impression of Lady Busybody had been that she fit her name perfectly. What business was it of hers, after all, what Alice and her co-sex workers did with their vaginas?
After her sermonizing at Madam Lola’s, she’d called Alice aside and slipped a perfumed card into her hand. “Ensure you come without fail at nine tonight, my dear,” she’d said imperiously. “I’ve a business proposition for you – one that will prove very profitable for us both, should you prove to be the person I’m looking for.”
Lady Busybody then departed in a swish of silk skirts, leaving Alice very confused. Once she’d gone, Alice sat down and poured herself a stiff drink to calm her nerves.
***
Alighting from her horse-drawn carriage, Alice stared at the fabulous mansion in wonder. Even after the frog gatekeeper let her in, she stared a while longer before heading up the walk. It was a wistful stare – she wanted a place like this someday. Fully gas-lit, state of the art everything. Maybe it even had one of those new coal-burning refrigerators?
It was odd, she thought, especially odd, for her ladyship to summon her at this late hour.
The door was opened by Cheshire Cat, or rather just its head – a rather large head with an even larger grin. Alice figured it must’ve had at least a hundred teeth in its mouth.
“Alice Sin, to see her ladyship,” she said politely.
“Ah yes, Alice. She’s expecting you . . .”
Alice’s main problem with Cheshires was their interchangeability. They all looked exactly the same – one never knew exactly which cat one was addressing. Alice often wondered whether all Cheshires were actually one and the same.
“Follow me,” the cat said, promptly disappearing in a ‘poof’ of air. That was another thing – they could teleport, reputedly anywhere across the entire continent if they so chose.
To make matters even more confusing, they all had the same name: Cheshire Cat.
Alice walked through the door as directed and found the cat’s head waiting for her, floating above a staircase just a short distance away.
“Well come on then, we really can’t keep her ladyship waiting.”
Alice shut the door behind her and followed it upstairs. Cheshire butlers were annoying at the best of times. And just like March hares with their ‘hare-in-uniform’ fixation, Cheshire Cats always worked as butlers. They even had one at the brothel. Madame Lola had one simple rule it was expected to follow: Never teleport in on a girl entertaining a client.
They had a penchant for turning up unexpected and unannounced – wherever they were least wanted – but the cats were worth the milk and fish it cost to hire them. As an added benefit, they caught mice and rats as well, which helped to control the rodent population wherever they went.
Floating three feet ahead of her, the cat led Alice down a hall and into Lady Busybody’s private chambers. The duchess lay waiting in bed, wearing nothing but her skimpy nightclothes.
Shit, Alice thought – this aristocratic hypocrite had suckered her in for a lesbo session. She should have fucking known. In any case, her ladyship would have to pay quite well if she wanted her cunt licked!
Lady Busybody read her guest’s thoughts and laughed. “You aren’t here for that sort of business, young lady. I don’t, er . . . what’s the expression again? . . . Er, yes . . . swing . . . I don’t swing that way. Have a seat.”
Alice sat. Lady Busybody got out of bed and walked over to a well-stocked bar, where she mixed two gin and limes. She handed one to Alice and sat beside her on the edge of the bed, sipping her drink and regarding her visitor in silence.
“What did you want to see me about, ma’am?” Alice finally asked, after the scrutiny became unbearable.
Marie Busybody smiled a cold, sly smile. “I was just wondering, my dear – How far are you willing to go to be rich?”
“I . . . I don’t understand.”
“I’ll help you, then. Obviously you’ve few moral scruples – you’re already a prostitute, after all. Would you be prepared to commit murder, say, for a quarter of a million dollars?”
Lady Busybody watched Alice’s face very carefully, saw her turning the thought over in her mind, saw the exact moment when her greed got the better of her conscience.
She smiled at Alice’s next question.
“Who do I have to kill and when do I get paid?”
Both women relaxed then, drank a lot more gin and lime, and worked out the details of their plan late into the night.
***
In a city thronging with streetwalkers, Marie Busybody had selected Alice Sin for one reason only – the young woman looked almost exactly the same way she did twenty-five years ago, back when she’d married Dudley.
Based on Marie’s information, her husband was still womanless after all this while; still didn’t have a mistress. Well, she was about to provide him with one he’d be unable to resist – a younger version of herself, who’d melt his heart down to nothing before breaking it into pieces and tearing it out of his chest. Figuratively speaking, that was.
His death had to appear accidental.
Chapter 3
While the trap-driver packed her bags into the carriage, Alice bought a newspaper from a station vendor – The New York Times, April 15th 1867. The headlines were the same as always:
TEXAN FORCES DRIVEN BACK BY NEW YORK TROOPS (VICTORY IMMINENT)
HER MAJESTY COMMISSIONS NEW BOILER IN LOWER EAST MANHATTAN
RIPPER STRIKES AGAIN!
This last story held Alice’s attention. She decided to read the details:
Mary Ann Smith was found dead this morning in an alley near the corner of 42nd and Broadway. A streetwalker by profession, Ms. Smith’s head was apparently cut off with a sharp object the March hares suspect to be a sickle. In addition, all of her internal organs had been removed from her body, scattered around her corpse for a distance of twenty meters.
Alice was utterly sickened. How could anyone . . .
“All done, Miss,” the trap-driver said.
She nodded at him, folding up her paper. The driver handed her up into the carriage and they set off for the Excelsior Hotel, the horse’s hooves clopping noisily upon the paving stones.
The trap was forced to stop twice for units of March hares hop-marching past. As always, the military hares’ faces were set in expressions of utmost seriousness. The revolvers in their waist holsters jangled like jewelry, and their back-slung rifles clacked loudly against their helmets each time their feet hit the ground. Every now and then they pulled their watches out and glanced at them with studied satisfaction. It seemed that battle was the only engagement for which March hares weren’t worried about punctuality.
Upon her arrival at the Excelsior, Alice Sin checked into her suite and collected the parcel Lady Busybody had sent in advance of her arrival. Inside were her false identification papers, as well as funds for the generous expense account she’d been promised. When she left the hotel, Alice took another horse trap straight to Lord Busybody’s residence.
***
The large, riverfront mansion made Alice green with envy for such privilege. As she rang the doorbell, her resolve to kill Lord Busybody hardened in her lovely bosom.
The door was opened by Cheshire Cat.
Unable to tell the difference between these feline butlers, Alice had since stopped trying, concluding that they really were all the same cat. She didn’t bother considering the theological implications of this conclusion – i.e. if every Cheshire was actually one and the same, then Cheshire Cat must be God, seeing as it was omnipresent (well, almost).
It was just easier not to think about it.
“Alice Sin,” she told the cat, its ginger-striped body now fully visible. “I’m here to see Lord Busybody.”
Cheshire Cat grinned especially broadly. “Is he expecting you?”
Alice took her forged letter of introduction out of her purse, then put it away again, remembering that cats couldn’t read.
