by Kin S. Law
With the Squamosa straining to hoist herself back onto the track before the next engine came through, there was an atmosphere of urgency with the workmen. They scrambled forward and backward, connecting cranes with tall sprockets and frantically loading fuel pods from the fuel car. Not a single relay allowed the signaling of the oncoming train, barreling along at ungodly speeds toward them. If it collided with the rear of the derailment, even at braking speeds, it would wrest the remaining cars off the track and turn the valley into a bonfire.
“Dammit!” one of the workmen said, as a fuel pod tumbled off his cart, striking a stone and leaking a sticky, bluish slick.
The deputies and engineers were understandably nervous. The passengers and trapped drivers, less so. Onlookers milled about, conversing, peering curiously as more and more official-looking cruisers approached, crowding the narrow throat of the road and furthering their entrapment.
Several of the younger train passengers commandeered a wide, flat high ground invisible to the valley below. The drivers below looked on enviously as these well-off society ladies collected themselves and headed up. The menfolk came to Hargreaves and asked if she might ascend the lofty heights to discern if the girls were safe from bandits. It was natural, she supposed, as there were few women of an age to hold no truck with such frivolity yet still hale enough to climb the rocks. At first, she had refused point-blank, but she began to fear some entrepreneurial youth would climb the rocks himself, so she took it upon herself to get rid of their excuse. The louts spared not a glance for Hargreaves’ own statuesque figure and leonine mane, though they had watched the young girls climb. Granted, she’d been slotted into a dun traveling dress and trapped in a hot sweatbox for hours, but the sting was sharp, nonetheless.
At the top, Hargreaves found the ladies had opened parasols, and sent for extravagant amounts of teatime victuals, and were sunbathing as if they were on the beaches of the French Riviera. The view over the valley was quite beautiful, stretching away a golden vista to either side. Hargreaves accepted a biscuit and some lemonade before heading down.
Once she reported the situation, the menfolk seemed to lose interest—out of sight, out of mind. Parlor games sprang up on the roadside. The conductors revived the attendants, who engaged the spirit of opportunistic capitalism with cases of lemonade, cakes and other victuals now salable to a larger audience. All the while a group of engineers, naked to their dark waists, wrestled with great chains and other heavy equipment to put the Squamosa to rights. Hargreaves thought the division of labor didn’t have to be quite so chromatic, but she was at a loss as to where to start fixing the problem or what the problem even was. It was not her place to question it.
In fact, in the riot of recovery, deploying the crane and sorting out those passengers who would surely never see their heirlooms again, and the amiable picnic atmosphere now permeating the afternoon, the murder might very well have been overlooked.
The girls were returning from their plateau, save one or two stragglers. Lord knew why they had stayed—for a glimpse of the sunset, perhaps? It had grown dark, but the warmth of the sun was still in the rocks, when the cry rang out.
Hargreaves immediately knew the scream of death and raced toward it, only to smack right into a panicked young woman. She had not finished restoring her dress from the sunbathing, and her underthings showed. It was hard not to judge the menfolk, who seemed more shocked by the sudden whiteness of her petticoats than the screams.
“Men,” muttered Hargreaves. By the stations of the cross, they were only underclothes!
“Oh my God! Bernadette, oh, she was only just there, by the rocks. She fell. She’s still running!” said the girl, her shock infectious.
“Here, take care of the hysterical lady,” said one rather strapping fellow, who felt compelled to ascend before the frowning Hargreaves could help. A few others lit portable arc lanterns, and in the harsh light, the strapping fellow looked much the cad to the inspector’s eye.
“Oy, who do you think you’re speaking to?” Hargreaves protested, but she was weighed down by the nervous bundle in her arms. “Hi, what’s your name? Penelope? All right, come now, sit there, everything will be fine. Yes, Bernadette will be fine.”
Hargreaves foisted the lady onto a rock, where she could look after herself reasonably well. The inspector did not see why self-reliance had to be a solely male virtue, nor why she was the designated nurse. The strapping fellow pulled out a rather large pistol, with a far too clean chrome inset. Then he flew up the trail.
Once the girl’s protests were overcome, Hargreaves put a foot onto the path just in time to hear the bang of a firearm. Casting aside her presumptions, she dashed up the pebbly slope, nearly getting her head blown off in the darkness by a second volley. Only her Yard instincts saved her at the last moment, preserving her behind the cover of the ridge.
“Blast it, I’m the woman, the one from below!” she cried. She thumbed her lighter, which lit the scene before her in a comforting sphere of firelight, and held it to her face.
“Oh! I’m so sorry. He’s gone behind the brush!” The strapping fellow said. His voice sounded as if his suspenders were on too tightly. “There’s a lot of blood,” he added, too loudly for Hargreaves’ taste.
Looking about her, Hargreaves saw the scraps of vegetation indicated, and rolled toward it. Dry and crumbly, they offered little cover, but the pile of rocks they stood upon were good enough against any slugs dulling themselves against their bulk. She was also dimly aware of another girl, slumped against a rock, and a man, spread-eagled, tinting the air with the copper of blood. She pulled her gun and held it together with the lighter, with her fingers splayed to protect her eyes. Hargreaves was mindful the flame did not touch the cylinder. Then she ducked over her rock, all in one go to blind whomever was out there.
A deeper shadow shifted, spitting out the figure of a man.
Hargreaves caught the dastard in the shoulder with her .22, just as the figure emerged from a clump of brush. He was colorful, standing out from the desert in flickering gold. As he fell, something tumbled from his hand and stuck deep in the earth—a vicious boning knife, long and curved, with a sturdy wood grip. The man’s face turned into the light.
It was the juggler, Cole D. Shanks.
There was a queer expression upon the juggler’s face, a grimace owing no small part to pain, and all to some possessing hate. Another spectre, Hargreaves could not help but think. But she had loaded her gun with .22 bullets that were never intended to kill, and Shanks was only stunned and bloodied.
She was upon him in an instant, kicking the weapon away, and a tussle followed. But high ground was high ground, and boot heels were boot heels. Shanks rolled, as if he could escape, perhaps, but came to a painful rest against a sharp stone. Dust coated the blood on his colorful costume, and the wound must surely have stung abominably. The man was lucid, with no sign of shock, hissing in pain.
“Why?” Hargreaves asked, leveling her gun at the performer’s chest. They were both breathing heavily, and even the one word was considerable effort. Her flame flickered, dangerously.
Shanks, wheezing, mumbled something. He grinned, his lips moving impossibly farther toward his ears.
“What?” gasped Hargreaves. She was starting to see red. Perhaps she was wanting of water. The last of the mushrooms? But that was hours ago. Shanks’ colors were running together, the handsome suit blurring into chevron shapes, like tiny horned diamonds in the flickering light. They looked more like scales than anything, and when she focused on his face, that too was strange, as if its surface crawled with a thousand golden insects. When he spoke, his mouth was a gash in the surface of the moon. The words she could make out were gibberish.
“A hair under forty dollars,” he was saying. “The kidneys. The eyes, dearer, half a Benjamin. The heart, a quarter thousand. But they’re the hardest...”
“Ugh!” Hargreaves shrieked, and heard an answering call. It set Shanks to shouting.
&nbs
p; “The girl! I got so close! Close enough so you smell the perfume off her skin and you realize she’s just made of meat. Fat and skin, nerve, and gristle, and meat, meat, meat. And meat, you can buy by the pound…”
Shanks snarled, springing forward like a cornered beast.
Hargreaves shot him, one-two-three, in perfect Yard form. Because she didn’t stop shooting until she put down the threat, and this time the bullets hit at point-blank range, pricking the juggler full of holes. He went down like a sack of bricks.
Or a pound of sausages, thought Hargreaves.
She felt whatever dark thing that had taken Shanks grip her for a moment, and she thought maybe, just maybe, she heard the shattering noise of a doorknob-sized glass orb break on the rocks.
She looked at the other man sprawled upon the ground. His clothes were good, but not flashy. She touched for a pulse—none. When she went to check, the girl was still breathing, probably just out from the shock of seeing blood. The man, an attendant? A paramour? It did not matter. He was dead.
She had no doubt, then, that there had never been a Brazen Bull at the circus. At the rodeo, perhaps there had been some clockworked attraction that had later been incorporated into the visitors’ stories. But the thing that had killed all those people that night had been Shanks. Shanks, with his easy smile, and his fast hands. The way he had tripped her attacker back at the circus into the horse trough, thinking nobody had seen. Even armed, a person might not see him coming, with the darkness and the tantalizing lights of the circus. And there was his trailer, with so many places to hide contraband, and so many chances to meet with the Ghost Train.
Hargreaves spared a thought for Jocasta, whom she had cared for—what had become of her? There were no easy thoughts to be had there.
Later, as she descended the rocks of the plateau with the girl in hand, she heard the others calling to each other that the body was gone. The clown was no longer on the plinth of rock, and in fact was nowhere to be seen. Search parties were organized, more lanterns got from the authorities’ stores. As Hargreaves sat in her Feint, watching the officers remove the girl to an ambulance on the other side, she thought of another story and checked the back of the flatbed, where Alphonse sat in the dark. Alone, by the light of her flame. Good.
But that was of little comfort. Even after the deed was done, the grimace would not leave her; the feeling of madness in Shanks’ round eyes. It was inside of Hargreaves, something that maybe had almost caught her as well, clung to her by its fingernails until it was violently jostled aside by this baptism of blood. There was something roaming the ether, perhaps a demon loosed upon the land, but nothing virgin or native. No, no, this was not a wild thing, but a warped, imprisoned creature Hargreaves had known most of her life, that had found freedom in the wide-open Eden of America.
Due to either gross negligence or sage cunning, the local police did not arrest Vanessa Hargreaves. Vanessa herself was not sure which. At any rate, too many people were out looking for the murderer Shanks to bother stopping her. Later, with the help of an officer, she managed to back out of the valley. He wanted nothing more than to be rid of her in their jurisdiction. One less mess to tidy up. She passed a hearse, a landau, its boxy carriage final in its utilitarian shape. Then she was on her way, and yes, definitely, there was nobody in the back seat.
About an hour later, she heard the thunder of the other train colliding into the back of the Squamosa. Thirty tons at least, plus animal, human, and cargo, righted by a massive effort onto tracks two yards apart. The engineers had forgotten to get the train going, held rapt by the spectacle of the murder.
Station 5
America the Beautiful
From upstate New York, Inspector Hargreaves’ Mobile Automata Division took the train west, in roughly the direction the fearsome tarantula automata had been traveling. Arturo’s spending account only came as far as the telegraph stations, that is, somewhere between Ohio and nowhere. Past that they had to rely on hard currency. So they peddled the weathered cab, and as the journey went on, their last possessions. Cezette, for one, felt the loss most keenly, but also wholeheartedly—some of the sold things were for her legs.
Yet as they crossed the golden mountains and into the rolling forestry of America, a smile also crossed into her face and stuck there, as if spirit gummed. It wasn’t long before they caught the whispered rumors of some giant metal man traveling the highways of America. MAD followed, from the foothills of the Appalachians across the southern reach of the Great Lakes.
Through Chicago and across Iowa.
Making the connection over the plains’ dirigibles past Montana. These were great balloon clouds floating in orderly lines over the plateaus, as if foreshadowing a storm that would never come. It was not significantly quicker than a locomotive, but benefited from being totally indifferent to the landscape, though storms grounded them twice. Also, half the lines had been closed off and no engines ran the Northern corridor. Guardedly, the clerks spoke of something prowling the tracks, some kind of roaming menace that preyed on travelers. One intrepid paper had a staked out a position and photogrammed something terrifying: a vast shadow spilling over both sides of the tracks at a pass, dark eyes shining in the dark. Whatever it was, it was big. Cezette thought proper Ghost Trains had no business being so corporeal.
Mountains and lakes came and went beneath MAD as they flew west, the great canvas of America reduced to mere scenery. The main entertainment seemed to be watching two fighter escorts bristling with riflemen. They swooped over the ever-changing landscape, the only protection against air pirates. They could be seen sometimes, the shark fins of their sails stark against the rolling yellows and greens below.
“America, she is beautiful!” Cezette proclaimed, as one wild beauty to another. Arturo felt a sudden pang of paternal feeling, though she was no child of his.
South, and always west.
As they drew closer, the rumors evolved into articles in the local papers. Hargreaves’ trail seemed clearer and clearer with each way station. Once they passed Utah, however, the trail grew cold; there were no articles about the mysterious traveling automata, nor rumors about its operator. It was as if the vast salt flats had swallowed them whole. Even Arturo’s information networks diminished to a dribble of telegrams, often two days late and of no use anyway. It was all they could do to ride the trains and ask the people on them, like some sort of Luddite. Here, past the breadbaskets, the rails had opened up again, connections available at Salt Lake City, Grand Junction, and Cedar City.
On a routine way station stop, they learned of a town called Midland, a gateway between the heartland and the ports of the Northwest. A successful mining town turned fuel hub, Midland was destined to become one of the great western cities in Washington territory. That is, until an accident lit the coal mines beneath the town. Their great drill tunneled too deep, or hit some sleeping geological titan, and the next thing they knew the mines were aflame. Smoke began to issue between the cracks of the Earth. Water became contaminated, bursting aflame at the merest touch of a match. A gray murk covered the town in ash and acrid poison. Buildings crumbled in sudden sinkholes. People fell through gaping maws in the street, swallowed by the hellish inferno beneath.
Arturo had said he suspected Hargreaves still wished to drop the box into the Lands Beyond. Nevertheless, if the inspector had word of Midland, she would know that was as good a place to dispose of the box as any, and closer than the Pacific. Of course, these destinations were only a product of his inductions, but they made sense. Hargreaves merely needed to drop the box into a sinkhole, where the flaming abyss would hide it forever. The periodicals had published numerous photograms of tall, thin drilling spires erected over a blasted inferno, and Hargreaves likely would have seen them
It was cheering news to Cezette, and it made the picturesque scene scrolling past them more beautiful. Their train was a handsome one, its windows like gilt picture frames. Even in a pinafore, clicking legs churning up an uncomfortable
heat inside the wool, her enthusiasm could not be contained. Now she leaned out of the train window, holding her hat and watching an eagle wheel over the rusty plateaus.
“Look at it! Oh, is there nothing so grand?” Cezette cried to the wind.
“Yes, if you can forget about the underground slave economy, the barely concealed militaristic isolation, the perversion of the democratic ideal…” Jean Hallow trailed off as Cid and Arturo both gave him their best searing looks. A dark cloud came over his brow.
“How uncharacteristically grim of you, my dear Jean,” Arturo said, settling on one of the plush couches in the spacious sleeper car. He tore into a waxed bag of Spud Chips. “Curses! These are crisps!”
“Didn’t you live in America for a time, Hallow?” Cid said, in his usual kindly grunt. He sounded like a French horn trying to play a waltz.
“Yes. I attended private school and university here,” Jean said. He huddled deeper into the lapels of his greatcoat. “I apologize. The scenery is beautiful, I would not want to spoil it for you.”
“Oui! Look at all the space! You can see for miles!” Cezette cried. She started to shift sideways, for a better view, but her foot froze as she shifted her weight. Cezette began a slow topple into the opposite couch.
“Your leg!” Jean said.
“Careful, girl!” Cid said.
Both of them reached out for her at the same time, Jean opening his arms to catch her, Cid reaching for her outstretched arm to steady her. There was a slit through the skirt for her clockworked legs to stride more easily, and now they came jerkily through, tearing the slit further. Cid pulled on Cezette’s arm, and she fell sideways into Jean’s lap. Her legs came up and bashed Cid across the brow. He fell beneath them, pinned like an insect. It was the perfect time for someone to come in and misunderstand the situation, so of course the paneled train door slid open.