Clockwork Canada

by Dominik Parisien

  No spirit drifted about her, already having fled the horror of her murder. Chex’ináx yaa wunagút examined her neck and wrists where dark purple markings ringed the greying flesh. She had the men haul the body out so the woman could be given a decent burial. There were no other clues to the murderer’s identity in the churned up earth, and the woman had been missing three weeks. She was definitely dleit Káa.

  * * *

  Chex’ináx yaa wunagút revisited the sites where the bodies had been found again, and when nothing more came to light she stopped in several times to check up on Peter Stanton. His small clearing was littered with pieces of metal, and sucking mud required boots to navigate. A scarf wrapped his neck and a hat tilted crazily on his head but he worked tirelessly, moving back and forth from tables to the buffalo woman statuettes, tinkering and screwing on pieces of metal.

  “How do they work?” she asked.

  He looked up, not having noticed her arrival. “Constable Walks Through Shadows! They’re steam engines. Much like trains.”

  He popped open a door in the torso. “Here is where I store the coal. They can run for three to five days before the reservoir needs refilling.”

  From a burlap sack under the leftmost table, he scooped up dusty coal chips and tossed them in, then shut the brass door under the bust. The buffalo woman’s head swivelled toward Chex’ináx yaa wunagút and though the features weren’t animated, she felt as if the machine watched her.

  Stanton scratched his head, smiling at his creation. “They’re a marvel really. The legs contain the pistons, and the buffalo-shaped head holds the water.”

  The mannequin raised its mitt-like hand and popped the door. Using her other hand, she scooped up coal chips and then dropped her jaw, adding the chips where a tiny orange flame danced in the back. Her mouth snapped shut and steam rolled from her wide nostrils.

  The buffalo woman raised one knee and then the other and high-stepping, moved south. Just as she blended into the dappled forest cover, Chex’ináx yaa wunagút saw that she was moving faster.

  “Where has she gone?”

  “I’ve programmed them with punch cards for certain geographic areas. Eventually I’ll add in the buffalo herds and a command to protect. But…” he stopped, his expression falling into sadness. “Since the spirits have attached themselves to some of the automatons, they don’t always go where I want.”

  Leaning against a tree, Chex’ináx yaa wunagút watched him, trying to gauge his mad genius. The machines were more efficient and elegant than any train she had seen.

  “Do you think they could find the murderer?”

  Peter stopped and frowned, his finger idly spinning a loose screw on the table. “I…don’t know. They haven’t seemed to do so yet… Maybe I can send one to you, see if it can do anything. But let me finish them first. It might take a week.”

  In the meantime, she asked more questions. Each murder had been closer and closer to the border between the dleit Káa land rented from the Musqueam and the villages, or along the shoreline. That still left her no closer to finding the killer, nor on how to protect anyone.

  All she could do was patrol in the evenings and hope to see something that would give her a lead. The abductions had not been spaced evenly but as the days tumbled past the villagers grew nervous, knowing another killing could happen anytime. Many women didn’t want to go out in the evenings, while others retorted that they refused to live in fear.

  Chex’ináx yaa wunagút chose the township of Se’nákw, knowing the next victim would be Squamish or Musqueam. While the area was too large to cover entirely, it was obvious that the murderer would be where women were likely to walk, and at night the few open establishments were the hotels and the saloons. This night she chose the Deighton Hotel in the area the locals still stubbornly called Gastown. Hours passed walking in the light chill, and Chex’ináx yaa wunagút found herself staring into the inlet, seeing the ghost outline of a few ships. Straggly trees poked into the dark skyline.

  She shook her head, wondering what the future would look like with the land shaved, and shivered. A small splash reached her, no doubt some night bird dipping for fish but she moved forward quietly, and unholstered her gun. The scatter of stars and the waning moon gave minimal light, and stumps or logs hunkered as darker shadows.

  Nearly at the water’s edge, with the light reflecting back, she saw movement, heard the half-strangled whimper of a woman, and knew. She aimed at the back of the man she could see fighting with someone. She fired and the figure spun as the bullet hit.

  The man turned and ran straight at Chex’ináx yaa wunagút. She must have hit the arm. Her reflexes were good but she couldn’t move fast enough and he was on her, slugging her as her other arm came up. He wrenched the gun from her hand, and as she kicked out he grabbed her braid, pulling her head back and dropping her. She couldn’t see who it was but she wasted no time, going for the knife in her boot. Slashing up, she caught a sleeve but the knife didn’t hit flesh.

  The next thing she knew he had wrapped her braid around her neck and was twisting. Chex’ináx yaa wunagút slashed out again, hitting the leg, but a hard wrench of her hand and she was without her knife, pulling at her own braid as he strangled her. She would be the next victim. As her vision reddened and turned grey, she felt only sadness that she wouldn’t be able to aid the people.

  Suddenly, the pressure released on her throat and Chex’ináx yaa wunagút rolled over onto her side, coughing, blinking back tears. Something metallic glinted. Sitting back, her head spinning, she looked up as her lungs struggled for air.

  The thin moonlight silhouetted a buffalo woman. The automaton smashed the man high into the air with one arm. He flopped down like a rag doll across a stump, a grunt escaping as he collapsed.

  Chex’ináx yaa wunagút patted around and found her gun. Grasping it, she pushed herself up and staggered forward, swallowing past the burning in her throat.

  The woman first attacked was kneeling and weeping but seemed okay. The buffalo woman stood like justice staring down at the man. Chex’ináx yaa wunagút moved in and looked at him. His eyes shone bright, staring up at the stars, blood trickling black from his mouth. She didn’t recognize him.

  “Why,” she rasped, moving close to peer at his face. “Why kill them?”

  His hair was dark and he might have been part native, part white but it was hard to tell. His mouth moved wordlessly. She leaned in.

  “Sacrifice,” he said, then expired.

  Chex’ináx yaa wunagút stared for another minute, puzzling what his one word could have meant. But no words would have appeased her anger at his monstrous treatment of the women. She faced the buffalo woman, who turned toward her. A golden mitt touched her shoulder as gently as a feather. Then a wisp of ethereal fog rose from the head, hovering above, and a woman’s features, definitely Squamish, smiled at her and nodded. The wraith didn’t disperse as she thought it would but settled back into the construct.

  The buffalo woman turned and walked away, raising each knee high as her pistons brought her back to the grove where Stanton worked.

  * * *

  Peter Stanton had cleaned up and wore his coat and hat. For once his hair was combed and his shirt tucked in.

  Summer had moved in, bringing with it the soft warm air and a hum of bees. South of the Granville townsite and the villages, the trees were still thick, towering close and keeping the day lively with moving shadows. A clear scar moved off to their left where the railway had come through years before.

  Five buffalo gals, as the prospector had called them, lined up facing east. Peter sighed.

  “I wish I could have created more. But I hope this will do. I can only send them with the directives and hope that they can save the buffalo.”

  For once, Chex’ináx yaa wunagút wore her people’s dress. She had left the red serge and the pistol behind. She looked over at Stanton, then back to the brass automatons. “You could sell the information of your creation to the rail
ways. It would save them money with the efficiencies you have created. Probably save you a sentence.”

  “I’m not interested in making them more money.”

  About each bison-shaped head, between the horns, an image formed as the ghosts of the murdered women rose up out of the automatons.

  Chex’ináx yaa wunagút raised her hand to them. She would not be sending these spirits on their way. They each raised their hands back and waved to Peter and her.

  “Your sister?”

  Peter swallowed, still looking at his inventions. “No, she never appeared. I can only hope she is at peace with the others. These five are the ones who have stayed.”

  The buffalo women popped open their compartments and shovelled some coal chips into their mouths. Shutting the doors with their hands, steam billowed from their noses, and the machines raised a hand, then turned east. Raising their knees high, they built speed and began running beside the rail line, following it to the prairies, golden avenging angels on their way to save the bison.

  Peter Stanton sighed. “There they go.” He turned to Chex’ináx yaa wunagút. “I’m ready to go now.”

  She asked, “Do you think they will protect the buffalo?”

  “I hope so, but they have their own wills. It’s up to them now.” He turned toward her. “Constable Walks Through Shadows, where do you plan to send me?”

  She looked at him, tilting her head to the side. “I took an oath to uphold the law and I won’t forswear it. But there is right and wrong. You have tried to right your wrongs and what I see here is that you have already paid for your crimes. I imagine the buffalo might still need your help.”

  It was her turn to raise her hand to Peter. Chex’ináx yaa wunagút mounted her horse and rode back into the teeming world of people and the borders they would brush against every day.

  OUR CHYMICAL SÉANCE

  TONY PI

  To thoroughly inspect the spacious Silverbirch Room before the séance would take more time than we had, but I did what I could. No clockwork cheats lay hidden between the wall of books and the arched windows, and no mystical runes had been etched onto the crystals of the chandelier or cut into the fossil calygreyhound skeleton on display on the mantelpiece. All that remained was the grand salon harmonium, also the most troublesome. Madame Skilling could have hidden a charlatan’s trick anywhere among the instrument’s countless parts, from its mahogany upper casework to the hundreds of pipes at its heart.

  Cesar De Bruin rolled the key to the room between his palms as he stood watch, peering through the slightly ajar door. “Anything yet, Tremaine?” he asked. “Too many so-called spirit mediums have preyed upon my family’s grief, but they were charlatans with parlour tricks, all. I would rid myself of this one quickly as well. We haven’t got much time.”

  I couldn’t fault my friend’s dander. His only son Poul had shot himself with a palmcannon last summer, a year to the day. Cesar had this lounge closed to the guests at Château Banffshyre ever since. Had his wife not insisted on the séance, he would have been content to leave the Silverbirch Room sealed. “Laroux said he’d stall her, and he will. He’s nothing if not resourceful.”

  “Let’s hope. This Skilling woman’s convinced my wife that her ‘chymical’ method will not fail to contact the other side. I know too little of alchemy to prove her and her Ektoptikon device false, and Fay will not see sense. Have you nothing?”

  “In all likelihood Madame Skilling hasn’t breached this room, Cesar, judging by the dust.” I gave the lion’s-head handle on my new walking stick a quarter-turn clockwise, revealing a clever compartment in the shaft beneath the collar. Freed from its cherrywood cocoon, the foxfire-in-amber within shone brightly from its silver setting. I ran the illumination along the pedal keys, but they showed no signs of tampering.

  Discrediting a medium had not been my intent when I came to visit Sir Cesar De Bruin at Château Banffshyre. My team would always visit his château before and after a dig in the badlands east of here. What better way to bid adieu to civilized comforts than to indulge in them? Or afterward, to wash away the patina of antediluvian dust in the thermal springs? The grand hotel had much to recommend it, thanks to Cesar’s vision: scenery, hospitality, and luxury unparalleled. The railway baron had built a formidable chain of grand hotels across the Canadas and ensured that tourists would choose his line when they travelled across the continent by train. The Banffshyre was the jewel of his endeavours.

  Cesar and I had become friends on my first foray to the fossil valleys of Canada Northwest nearly a decade ago, when rumours of newly unearthed Leolithic skeletons had lured me across the Atlantean Ocean. Though my doctorate was in Aigyptian archaeology, my research into sphinx cults had led me to fossilized specimens of countless leonine hybrids worldwide. By chance I had boarded the same empyreumatic train from Montraal to Calygrey as the De Bruins. I was surprised the President of Pacifica Railway of the Canadas was onboard and that he had heard of me. He had invited me to talk fossils over dinner with his wife and son in his parlour car. At journey’s end, Cesar wouldn’t let me continue to the badlands without a stay at Banffshyre at his expense.

  The palatial mountain hotel among the pines was Sir Cesar De Bruin’s dream rendered real with unparalleled workmanship. During that first unforgettable stay, I walked Cesar and Poul through the hotel, teaching them about the fossils embedded in its limestone blocks. In the evenings, Cesar regaled me with tales of the Canadian rail over brandy.

  I hadn’t heard about his son’s death until I arrived this morning with my team, when Cesar had met me in the foyer, a husk of his once exuberant self. I had gone through the same depth of grief when I lost my wife years ago, and asked if I could help. I could, he said, come to the séance.

  “This spiritualist from Huronto has bewitched my wife with promises of contacting Poul on the other side through her Ektoptikon. If only we could, truly could!” His voice shook. “Fay and I were in Calygrey, only seventy-five miles away. We should have been here. He had such a wondrous talent for music, one that should have taken the world by storm! What pain would possess him to take his own life? We saw no signs, and he left no note. The question of why wakes me in the dead of night, every night, and it too is killing Fay. A séance might bring answers, but only if it’s not a scam.”

  Hence, my scrutiny of the Silverbirch Room.

  Jules Laroux nudged the oaken door open from outside and slipped in. “You’ve two minutes before they arrive, Professeur.” The stout man unslung his hand-crank cinetoscope and tripod from his shoulder, leaned them against the bar, and poured himself a shot of whiskey. “I tipped the porter well to take extreme care with Madame Skilling’s Ektoptikon device, and the lift man to stop on every floor on their way down.”

  “Thank you, Laroux.”

  “Will it be enough time, Tremaine?” Cesar asked.

  I raised my walking stick to the pipes above the keyboard and stops so that they’d catch the light of the foxfire amber. “Only to clear the most obvious components of tampering, I’m afraid. But I suspect that whatever trick she has, if indeed there is one, would be part of her Ektoptikon.”

  “Trick?” said a disdainful voice. A fawn-like woman invaded the Silverbirch Room fleetly and soundlessly. Dressed in a deep purple silk satin dress with a white tulle jabot, Madame Skilling regarded us in turn, first Cesar, then Laroux, then me. “A chymical séance may be a novel technique for channelling the spirits, but it is no trick. Do not mistake the new alchemy for chicanery. Skeptics are welcome at my sittings, and become believers soon enough. Mister…?”

  “Professor Tremaine Voss, archaeologist.” I twisted my walking stick to re-seal the amber in its hidden compartment. “I never said I didn’t believe in spirits. Quite the contrary. I’ve roused spectres in Aigyptian tombs, fled from phantom tigers in the Orient, and faced down the ghost of a riddling sphinx. Put some to rest. Left others undisturbed.”

  “It’s me you need to convince. Jules Laroux, truth-reelist.”
Laroux set his shot glass down. “Didn’t you take the lift with Madame De Bruin and your Ektoptikon?”

  Skilling smirked. “I sensed the stairs would be quicker.”

  “Nothing thrills me more than unmasking a fraud. You won’t deceive us with mere clockwork poltergeists or magic lantern shows.” Laroux patted his cinetoscope. “Mind if I film?”

  “You may not, Mister Laroux,” Skilling replied. “If you’re staying for the sitting, I require your full participation. Even the dead demand respect.”

  Laroux began to protest, but I calmed him. “Perhaps it’s for the best, my friend. If our efforts succeed in summoning Poul’s ghost, it’d be considerate to pay heed to the moment. But if you could explain the workings of the Ektoptikon, Madame, it will help dispel our doubts.”

  A chime from the mezzanine heralded the arrival of the limbeck lift on this level. Skilling smiled. “Ah, the Ektoptikon arrives. All will be clear soon, Professor. Gentlemen, if you could kindly draw the curtains?”

  I made my way towards one of the round-headed windows, relying only slightly on my walking stick for support. In the past, the thermal springs here have had a miraculous effect on the old injury to my left leg, and each time I bathed in these waters I felt as spry as a man half my age. I hadn’t time to partake in a soak as yet, but it was a comfort I looked forward to.

  As we pulled the red velvet curtains closed, a porter carried a sturdy metal trunk into the lounge with languid steps. Lady Fay De Bruin, clad in mourning black, trailed in behind him clutching a leather handbag to her bosom. I hadn’t seen Fay as yet this visit, and what I saw broke my heart. She was Grief herself, gaunt from fasting and pale from seclusion. Had her joy and pride died with her only son?