The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk

by Sean Wallace

  On my chest I could feel the weight of my terror and in my pocket I could feel the weight of the gun, pulling me, down, down, down . . .

  EXCERPT FROM, “ON DRACI AND REVOLUTION” (CENSOR’S COPY, REDACTED)

  The First Mandate War ended shortly after the Glorious Revolution, with the New Commonwealth Committee suing for peace after being unable to organize anything resembling a defense. Many of the former Empire’s Northern and Eastern territories were ceded to the Mandate, a sore wound that would fester in the heart of the Old Empire. Some hoped that a new government would mean an end to all war between the two powers. They were wrong. The Second Mandate War began some ten years after the end of the first, with the New Commonwealth government demanding the return of ceded territories. The conflict has raged since, fought mostly in the mountains and steppes of the central continent, with intermittent ceasefires that last sometimes years, sometimes only months.

  In the current estimate some ninety-eight million men have died over a border that has shifted imperceptibly in the last forty years.

  7

  I was a piece in some game being played and I didn’t understand the rules.

  I took a drag of a cigarette and watched the darkened outline of the safehouse. I had been out here for hours, smoking cigarette after cigarette, waiting for any sign that the safehouse had been compromised. Waiting for Song. Waiting for some sign from Attia.

  Had that truly been her?

  I lit another cigarette.

  Don’t trust anybody.

  That wasn’t new to me. I’d known that since those bloody days in Aelia Capitolina, the massive student rally that was supposed to have been the beginning of our own revolution. The Commissariat had known all about the rally, of course. They had infiltrated our local organizing councils with spies and agents.

  People like my roommate Sina.

  And at the height of the riots, as the students gathered at the foot of the Great Hill and the army brigades had closed in around them, Sina and those like him had pulled out their guns. They didn’t even try to arrest anybody: they had just started shooting. We were unarmed. Many of my friends, the last true friends I could remember having, had died in those desperate moments.

  In that bloody chaos Attia and I had become separated. We’d made desperate plans to meet in a rundown kaffahouse and gone our separate ways. It was safer to split up, we’d thought. But of course she had never shown up.

  And now I stood in another city in front of another safe-house, waiting for another woman to come meet me.

  Res mutatae mutatae non sunt . . .

  The cigarette butts built up about my feet.

  It was well past midnight when I slunk through darkened hallways up to the second floor and entered the safehouse. The inside was black. I stumbled around the dark room, trying to remember where the light switch was, cracking my toe against a wood footstool and banging my shin against a low glass table.

  I stumbled into the kitchen. Through moonlight filtering in the window I could see the outline of the peony-painted kaffa tin still sitting on the counter. Quiet. Empty.

  I flicked on the kitchen light and picked up the tin. In that moment there was nothing else in world I needed more. I filled a pot with water spat from groaning pipes and cranked the gas burner. I prized the lid off the coffee tin and scooped down inside.

  Something beneath the powdered grounds. I reached into the tin with my hand. My fingerers found something. A thick piece of card. I pulled it free.

  Words and numbers, written in a blotted black script that I knew so well.

  Don’t Trust Her. Come Alone. Res mutatae

  279.0557 φ, 274.552 λ

  Attia. I knew that writing anywhere. She had been here. But when? A woman in a shawl, moving away through a crowd.

  Heart hammering, I stepped backward and slumped into the kitchen chair. Don’t trust her. Who, Song? The woman who had brought me here, who had probably just been arrested? Had the note been left for me? It must have been. But how would she know . . . the kaffa tin. Song never uses it.

  Come Alone. But where? How to find her? My head swirled.

  The numbers . . . an address? Map coordinates?

  I heaved out of the chair and back into the living room, to a tall red-mahogany bookcase with an oversized atlas. I dropped it onto the table and flipped it open to a massive map of the world. There was the zero degree line, running through Sháng hǎi. I ran my finger along it. 274.552 λ. I frowned. There were only 180 degrees in each direction. 274.552 didn’t even exist as a position. More from habit, I ran my finger along the equator, and then counted lines to the north, were the pole was marked 90. Neither coordinate was even on the map.

  It doesn’t make sense . . .

  Why the riddles? Why all the games? I was furious. I ground my teeth so hard I thought they might explode into talcum.

  Focus. Obviously it was a code. One I could decipher and Song couldn’t. Res mutatae . . . Those words we’d thought were so clever. That she’d inscribed in that copy of the Little Green Book.

  Suddenly inspired, I reached into the worn leather bag that still sat by the door where I’d left it. I pulled out the copy of her book. 279.0557 φ. I flipped open to page 279. Her scrawl filled the margins: symbols and numbers raised to the power of crazy. Nothing stood out. Frustrated, I flipped to 274. The same. I thumbed through the book, looking for either of those old Greek letters.

  “Cāco,” I swore. What the hell was Attia playing at? Why the hidden messages? Why all the secrecy? Why had she not left a message for Song at the deaddrop and have done with it? Why had she brought me all the way here . . .

  I was staring at the last page of the book, with the airbrushed image of Wagner smiling benevolently. Attia had defaced his image with her pen, making him look like some kind of demon or evil spirit. She had hated the Party, the Central Committee. What had happened to her? Why had she changed so suddenly and so much? That was the real question.

  On the blank page opposite the Chairman she had scrawled our slogan.

  And a number. No equation this time, just a single long string of digits: 239.0521634, followed by a ‘u’.

  I looked back at the thick card I’d pulled from the kaffa tin. Res mutatae

  Things change . . .

  Pen, paper, some hastily scrawled equations. If I took each number on the note, subtracted it from the value in the book . . . I ran my finger along the map. West and then north. My finger ran along the map, drawn to the new coordinates like a lode-stone. It stopped in the desert to the south and east of Korla. I felt triumph, and then a cold chill. There. Attia was there.

  I’d need a more detailed map to find out where, exactly, but she was there.

  People talk of butterflies in their stomach – I felt more like mine was being gnawed at by a nest of rats. I took a calming breath. Think clearly. Things weren’t always what the seemed. How had she known I’d take the book? How had—

  Footsteps outside the door. I slammed the atlas closed and shoved the green book into my bag just as the door swung open.

  Song stood in the doorway. I found that I was holding my breath. Don’t trust her. She looked me over, ran her gaze through the room, over the atlas on the table, the leather bag on the couch beside me. Her thin lips pursed into a line. After a moment she stepped inside, bolting the door behind her. “Going somewhere?” she asked.

  I tried to keep my breathing calm, my voice steady. “I thought you might have been arrested.”

  “I managed to slip him.” She took the plush chair beside me. “Were you followed?”

  “I-I don’t think so. I waited outside to make sure.”

  She nodded. Her eyes searched my face, and I couldn’t meet that gaze. I studied the closed atlas before me. “Did she get in touch with you, Artur?”

  Should I tell her? Did I have any reason not to trust her? “No,” I said, though I knew that I’d hesitated longer than I should have.

  Song reached over and put her
hand on my leg. Firm pressure moving up my thigh. I was hard almost immediately. All those years alone, hiding, nobody to trust or to talk to . . . My eyes met hers. That arcing energy I’d felt the night before and thought imagined sparked in her eyes.

  Don’t trust her . . .

  I sucked in a ragged breath. No. This wasn’t right. I stood up suddenly.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I need the bathroom,” I managed. I grabbed my leather case from the seat beside me.

  Song stood up, but I was already moving. Into the hallway and toward the bathroom. I did not stop or think. I slid through the doorway and slammed it shut behind me. I yanked the light-chain and rattled the lock across.

  My breath was coming in ragged gasps. What has happening?

  I shoved my hand into my pocket and pulled the gun out. The gun Song had given me. If she meant to betray me why would she had given me a gun? I snapped open the chamber. Inside: eight brass slugs, arranged in a tight ring.

  Song padded to the threshold. She tried the door, which rattled against the lock. “Artur,” she said. “What’s going on? Let me in.”

  I pulled one of the rounds out of the gun. Turned it over in my hand. My stomach was doing somersaults. The casing was empty. There was no bullet loaded inside.

  Don’t trust her . . .

  The door rattled again. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  I didn’t think much about what I did next. I shoved the gun in my pocket, threw open the bathroom window, and climbed outside and into the cold.

  NEWSREEL (iii)

  LOYAL DOG LEADS FLIGHT CREW HOME

  There goes the air-siren, and the Commonwealth’s furriest airman is ready to meet the threat!Wheel-blocks away and up into the sky! But what’s this? Mandate Sabotage! From the wreckage Dieter pulls his unconscious crew to safety! And now, stranded in the vast and empty plateau, they must survive. But don’t worry boys, Dieter knows the way! Home to a warm bed and a few extra bones, right Dieter? Air-Marshall Yakupov awards Dieter the distinguished air-medal! Courage, Bravery, Loyalty! And love for the Party!

  8

  I had spent too much time worrying, thinking about things that were lost and could never be replaced. I needed to act.

  I needed: an auto, petrol, food and supplies, a map that would show me exactly where the coordinates I’d scrawled onto that wrinkled slip of paper would take me.

  I started with the auto.

  The night streets of Korla were cold and dimly lit. Streetlights like paper lanterns glowed softly: rows of firebugs perched on a wire. The only movement on the streets were the lines of military trucks that hissed by now and again in the gloom, and the occasional vagrant who would stumble drunkenly into my path.

  I slunk through the night streets, sweating despite the cold, looking back over my shoulder, sure that Song or a Mandate Army man would be behind me, gun leveled at my face. But each time I looked back there were only empty streets. I found a line of parked autos on a side street and settled on a heavy sedan. It was all rounded curves and chrome finish, and the long front-end stretched out like the barrel of a gun. I could see a pair of keys glittering in the passenger-side footwell. I took the butt-end of the revolver and smashed it into the side-window. The shattering of glass made me jump and close my eyes. A dog barked wildly.

  Lights flickered on in the gated row houses. I keyed the ignition and pressed the gas pedal all the way to the floor. The engine roared to life. I swung the auto onto the road and drove off.

  I looked furtively back in the rearview mirror as I peeled away. No Song. No sign of chase. I wanted to vomit.

  Cold desert air pressed through the shattered window. A massive sign perched atop of a warehouse across the river and bled red light into the dark. I couldn’t read the ideograms, but recognized the ubiquitous double-happiness shuāngxĭ. Reciprocal joy, like that shared between lovers.

  Attia . . . had she changed so much? Was she even the woman I remembered from all those years ago? She was a magister of the first order, one of the most respected metallurgists in the world. What did that have to do with dragon’s eggs?

  Did I even really care anymore? Or was it about Attia. At one time our love had burned hot. Brighter than dragonfire. And now what? I was hurtling down night streets of a city I didn’t know, drawn into the orbit of a woman whose motives I didn’t understand, who had left me for dead and then drawn me back into her mad world.

  I needed the map and supplies now.

  Dawn was breaking and I drove through the chaotic morning traffic (blowing through intersections, driving at turns too fast and too slow, and all the time feeling my heart hammer at my ribcage as the wheel slipped though sweaty palms) until I found a filling station by a ramp that led onto an expressway. The store seemed to have a random collection of items: packaged foods, a gun-rack, maps and traveling equipment. The man running the station was Han, tall and thin but with jowly cheeks that drooped like empty bags. He had eyes always on the verge of laughter and spoke Türkik well enough for us to communicate.

  I opened the billfold that had accompanied my passport and laid several wide bills on the counter. “I need a grid map, four petrol cans, and several jugs of water.” I then pulled a last item from my pocket and placed it on the counter. “And I need more of these.”

  The merchant considered the bills laid out on the counter, and then my face.

  I had no idea how much money I’d lain down. I had no idea of the value of the goods I’d requested. I was in no mood to bargain.

  After a moment of silence, the merchant muttered something to himself in his native tongue and gave a quick, curt nod.

  As he filled out the order, I spread a grid-map open on the hood of the autocar. I unfolded the yellow slip of paper and traced my finger along coordinate lines. It moved across desert, stopping finally off the shore of a large body of water marked in characters that I couldn’t read.

  I waved the owner of the filling station over. “Where is this,” I asked the man, indicating the spot on the map.

  The merchant squinted and leaned in to inspect the place that I’d indicated. “Lop Lake,” he said. Then he frowned. “Why are you wanting to go there?”

  I said nothing.

  The man watched my face for too long a moment, and then shrugged. “Not much to see. The lake’s all dried up now. The dams.” He gestured broadly as if that explained everything. “It’s all desert. Not much but sand and salt.”

  “There’s not anything there?”

  “Just ruins.” He chewed a bit and then spat. “Lots of army out there. Trucks been driving things out into the desert day and night. Rumor says that this is about where they are going.” He surveyed the stolen auto. “That part of the desert . . . Death Sea, they call it.”

  “Sounds friendly,” I muttered, and when the merchant stared at me dumbly I realized that I’d spoken Germanic. Not a very good spy.

  “You’re not planning on taking this?” The merchant rapped the hood of the large sedan.

  “Why?”

  “That autocar is for towns. The roads out in the desert are not for town autos.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  The merchant shook his head and then pointed to a two-seat truck hidden behind the petroleum pumps. “I’ll trade you for my truck.”

  The truck’s paint was chipping and it was covered in gray dust. “How much is it worth?” I asked.

  “Same as the sedan.”

  I shook my head. “I think this sedan is worth four of those trucks.”

  The man considered my stolen auto. “The window is broken,” he said. And then he looked me in the eyes and any sense of mirth was gone.

  I swallowed. That truck looked like it would fall apart at any moment. I glanced at my watch. Time was moving fast. “Get the keys,” I said.

  EXCERPT FROM, “THE DRAGONRIDERS”

  REVISED EDITION, RAVENNA UNIVERSITY PRESS

  Dragons imprint. It is how the first riders tamed them. S
ome part of their avian, prehistoric brains will attach to one rider and bond to him for life. This process seems to have no relation to filial instinct. A wild dragon will imprint not upon its parent as a child, but rather upon its mate as an adolescent. So in some real sense the dragons viewed their masters not as parents or guardians, but rather as lovers. The lengths to which they would go to defend the body of a fallen rider are legendary.

  9

  I drove all day and into the next night. The landscape stretched endlessly in all directions, hard clay and loose gravel, colored like a cigarette stain. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being followed. The first part of the journey had been over paved, arrow-straight road. There had been two army checkpoints, but I’d been waved through without incident. As night fell I had turned off onto a smaller road of hardened earth and had bounded slowly over a rugged dirt track that faded beneath me with the light. I was actually glad for the truck. The engine made noises I didn’t like or recognize, but the thing seemed to do well on the ripped up road and I made better time than I would have in the autocar. The desert was featureless but for wind-carved yardangs. I felt almost like a dragon rider, setting off into the air above the wide ocean to discover the New World. Into uncharted territory.

  What was Song doing now? Searching for me, most likely. I charged on. The need to sleep pressed down on me like a massive weight.

  I had nearly nodded off at the wheel when a flare of headlights moving toward me snapped me back. I geared down and pulled to the side of the road. The lights were so bright that I had to squint, and they jerked like bad dancers as a vehicle bounced over the hardpan. As it neared the vehicle swung into the middle of the track and stopped.

  I chewed my lip. Army? Magistrates? Some lost farmer?

  I skidded the truck to a stop and plumes of dust spiraled up and away from the big wheels. I was very suddenly and very definitely awake. With the glare of headlights in my eyes I couldn’t see anything. My hand found the revolver on the seat in beside me. I rolled down my window.