by Kin S. Law
“Excuse me, I was wondering if you knew where the conductor was, I have some baggage to look after…Oh, my!” It was a young woman, wrapped in a colorful garment none of them could name. Though the brightly dyed silks covered her from neck to ankles, they were billowing cool, and the brown skin of her face was smooth and dry. She looked much more comfortable than Cezette.
“My good miss, this is not what it appears to be,” Arturo attempted to waylay the new arrival before she could summon the conductor. Instead, she lunged forward, nimbly pulling the French girl to her feet, away from the two men.
“Don’t you try anything, or we shall call for someone. Conductor! Conductor!”
Cezette took it upon herself to cover the new girl’s lips with one finger. The soft gesture was more effective than gagging her with a palm, as the menfolk were sure to do. With her other hand, Cezette calmly closed the door.
“You misunderstand. They are merely trying to assist me,” Cezette said. Before anyone could protest, the girl slipped her skirt up, sliding her opaque footwear down far enough for a glimpse of sprocketry to show. The brown girl’s eyes widened, but she said not a word. She sat down.
After a reasonable interval without the conductor making an appearance, Cezette sat down herself and, after a hesitant pause, removed the rest of her shoe and sock for Cid to make an inspection.
“I see you finally know to clean these regularly,” Cid grumped. He held the leg by the foot and calf and peered through the space where a normal leg’s Achilles tendon and the bone would be, oblivious of the wide-eyed young woman. He groped about with a tapering pair of tweezers. “There, a piece of the fabric is caught in the suspension spring. Damn ladies’ fashions…if these were in trousers, nothing would go wrong.”
“My bonnie Cid, je suis Française! I will look horrid in your stovepipes!” Cezette protested. She fished about in her small tote, until she found a floppy hat to jam defiantly upon her head.
“Bah!” Cid said.
“I suppose, where you come from, having steamwork legs is quite normal,” the girl still on the train seat piped up. The tenderness and skill Cid used in manipulating Cezette’s legs around their porcelain fittings had seemed to hold her rapt.
“Rude,” Jean Hallow coughed. He seemed to take the new arrival poorly. The lanky scholar sat resolutely staring at the blur of lush, wild country outside the window.
“Costly, but normal enough,” Arturo replied. Ever the accomplished liar, he made up a story on the spot. “Our Uncle Cid loves his niece so. I’m sure your elders are as affectionate to allow you the freedom to wander about without a chaperone, Miss…”
“Jade. Violet Jade,” the girl said quickly. “I am traveling in the car behind yours. With, ah, my father.”
“That is Arturo C. Adler, my guardian,” Cezette replied. “Cid Thatcher, my machinist, and Jean Hallow, my tutor. I am Cezette Louissaint, late of Paris. Arturo and Jean are lovers.”
Having been sequestered in a tower much of her young life, Cezette lacked the finesse of society more than she lacked English, and it showed sometimes. The sudden accusation sparked an instant din of quarreling; both men protested, insisting they were no item of any kind, became offended at the others’ protestation, and began to bicker with enough sass to drown out the North of England. To make matters worse, Cid was uncharacteristically progressive, repeating his grinning mantra of “it’s a new England; such things are as common as tea time,” with increasing variations of smuttiness and innuendo. But Cezette saw Violet Jade pale, as if she had never met a homosexual before.
“What brings you here, Miss Jade?” Cezette said as soon as she found a gap to slip out of the crossfire. She was curious about the new girl, since she hadn’t been allowed friends her own age in Paris. The constable in Hargreaves had flatly refused to put Cezette in a public school with the hooligans, but could find no private school willing to take a girl of little-known origin from a common household, so Jean Hallow had taken up the cause of her education.
“My father…he took a job at the plant up by the Falls,” Violet Jade said. As they chatted, Cezette fished needle and thread from a pocket to mend her skirt with deft strokes. She was becoming quite good at it, and it reminded her of her maman. Both of them.
“Yes... I have read the Indians are quite adept at steamcrafts,” Cezette said, remembering one of Jean’s periodicals. Jade frowned. “Or is that just an English presumption?”
“I am afraid so. But, I am not Indian,” Jade protested. “I was born and raised Bristol. My father is a moor of Sicily, and my mother an Italian and Russian performer. They met when she was touring his port of call.”
“My own mother was an artist of some renown,” Cezette said. “It is part of the craft to travel for one’s patronage. Anything could happen.”
“And your father?” Jade asked, but the expression on Cezette’s face was sufficient. Jade took her by the hand, a gentle, feminine gesture the French girl hadn’t known in quite some time.
Suddenly the little train cabin filled with a shimmering light—they were passing near another body of water, a rushing torrent nestled between America’s verdant curves. A train conductor’s voice came through the vacuum tubes, announcing the view and the beginning of tea time in the dining car.
“I apologize,” Arturo suddenly emerged from his row, which until this moment had been continuing in a politely hushed murmur. “But Jean and I must settle our differences in the adjacent cabin.”
The two of them got up and left the room. There was an audible bang as the adjacent cabin opened and shut. Cid looked around, then pulled out a small machinists’ journal and a sandwich he had procured from the train’s trolley.
“What? If you wanted something, you ought have spoken up. Here, go have some fun in the diner car,” Cid grunted. He held out a small sheaf of money, a crisp fold he must have slipped out of Arturo’s pocket when he wasn’t looking. Old habits die hard, Cezette thought.
“Thank you, Uncle Cid,” Cezette said, giggling, and the two girls left to make their way to the diner car.
Once there, Cezette was glad she had come. The diner car was well appointed, with a spacious triple-decker seating arrangement. A grand chandelier had been cleverly strung, immobile, between the gap of the top decks. Cornflower-blue and marigold tassels made the place feel almost Parisian.
When a serving man seated them at a bolted-down table in the middle deck, they discovered all the tableware was fine bone china edged in gold. Cezette was sure they would be destroyed with the first significant turn in the rails, but upon lifting one delicate cup, discovered a thin ring of clear rubber holding it fast to the saucer. Other locomotive conveniences were in use, including an ornate panel of toggles one could depress to discreetly summon the waitstaff, or to activate a small gramophone to play the train schedule and some light music.
“Quel d’ommage! They only have classical and this American jazz. Cid would have a ball,” Cezette remarked.
“It’s a shame. Habanero Aftershock have a new single,” Jade agreed.
“Is that some American group?” She asked.
“Yes!” Jade giggled. “The accordion player just takes the piss! Haven’t you heard them yet?”
“No, but the Heinous Anus was very good.” Cezette pronounced it “ay-noos.”
“The cafes were playing their cylinders all the time when I left London. Oh, and the bassist, he has the cutest bottom…”
“Tell me more about this…bassist…”
The ladies took their tea, or rather, the bottomless coffee everyone seemed to be having, and chatted pleasantly. Dense curtains gave them some measure of privacy, and contained their high-pitched giggling as well. Cezette had never done this with a girl her own age before. Questions came pouring out naturally, things she had burning in her head but was always too embarrassed to ask Maman. She was curious about the latest fashions, the newest music, the secret parties happening every Saturday amongst the progressive social set. But at t
hat moment, the dining car announced it was shutting down to prepare for evening service, and the conversation drew to an end.
“I will be very happy to see you again,” said Cezette.
“As will I,” replied Violet. “I will bring my gramophone cylinders.” They giggled, thinking of the bassist and his bottom.
The engine chugged north, through Idaho and Oregon, winding around Nevada to descend the spine of California. Over the course of the next day on the train, the girls stuck together, having few others of an age and temperament to talk with. They got on very well, and at the next tea time Violet got back around to the underground parties that seemed to happen in every fashionable city in Europe. Under Prague’s fairy-tale streets, in the ossuary warrens under Paris, even the old church of Padua, where it was said Romeo and Juliet made their union.
“There is a Venice here as well, in the new world. We could go to a concert while the train refuels,” suggested Violet one day at tea.
“Oh, we are not staying long!” Cezette protested. “We have some business, and then we will be gone. I am sure your father would protest, as well.”
“Why?”
“Why? Une femme traveling in California, going to a social gathering…I was told polite society is not yet ready for something so bold. What if you found a paramour?”
“Hah! I should like to see father stop me,” said Violet, her lip curling taciturn. Then, as if not meant for Cezette to hear, “Besides, I am promised to another…”
Cezette took a polite sip of tea, allowing Violet to return from her reverie.
“I am sorry, but I am here on a mission, and as much as I would love to, I am afraid it is not meant to be.”
“That is a shame,” Violet Jade said. “I was so hoping I could have—I say, what is that racket?”
Cezette and Jade pulled back the curtain of their dining booth, expecting perhaps an upset passenger or badly cooked cordon bleu. Instead, they found the diners out of their seats. The more assertive gentlemen were standing, peering around the chandelier at a uniformed conductor conversing tersely into a private speaking tube. They mumbled amongst themselves. Cezette accosted the nearest, a bespectacled gentleman with a paunch.
“Word from the forward cars is,” the gentleman said, “there’s been some disturbance farther along the line. The conductor is intent on clamming up about the subject.”
Cezette turned to Violet whose face was twisted in abject horror. Her rich brown eyes bulged from skull like rotten cherries. Her full lips stretched tight over her mouth, frozen in a silent scream.
“Violet, c’est a small disturbance, likely some wild deer on the tracks. The conductors have it well in hand.” Cezette tried to reassure the girl quivering in her bright silks, but she would not be consoled. Some childhood trauma, Cezette considered, remembering Jean Hallow’s lessons.
“Cezette, you do not understand!” Violet said in an exasperated whisper. “We must take cover; we must find shelter!”
“Where? We are on a moving train!” Cezette began, before she was cut off by a piercing cry from a higher deck.
“What is going on?” A concerned woman shouted from the third level. She had a husky, smoke-rough voice that would brook no refusal. It echoed through the diner car, prompting the more old-fashioned men to take charge and make for the conductor’s spot by the car’s entrance. It was certainly the gentlemanly thing to do, but Cezette was pleased to see several of the ladies place their napkins on the table and set off to find out for themselves what had happened.
Unfortunately, it was perhaps the least opportune time for the husky madam to make herself heard. As the investigating diners reached the front of the car, the first of them seemed to jump, and the others shortly followed, in a wave. But when they came down they crumpled, like paper.
“Hold on to something!” Violet Jade’s voice was something between a shriek and a bellow, and it caught the next throw of the train. The assorted tableware flew sideways, shattering like mortar against banister and skull alike. Cups smashed. Fobs winged past like deadly missiles. The husky woman tumbled head over heels like a circus performer in the center of the car.
Strangely, Cezette felt no panic, only a sort of detachment as if she were watching a piece at a picture-house. Her teacup gave a little hop, cup and saucer all of a piece, spilling a single drop of coffee in an inertial arc, right into the milk. It was an uncanny sight that more than anything brought Cezette’s wits into focus.
Cezette hadn’t forgotten the ways and means of her misadventures quite yet. She knelt. One of her hands flew to a rail, while the other depressed a spot in her leg, hidden by her skirt. There was a faint click, and Cezette suddenly found herself the rock in a deluge, anchored by the grip of her wrist and her heels. The claws in her soles held the material of the deck floor, and locked her ankles so she would not fall. Her sprung heels absorbed the shaking as a sort of disorienting vibration. There was a faint sensation of vertigo, as up became right and down became left and a tray of biscuits whirled about somewhere in the vicinity of her ear.
She threw a hand down to intercept Violet Jade, but her fingers were wet with coffee, and her grip loose. She might have been able to save herself, but her new and only friend tumbled headlong into the calamity.
Station 6
It’s Like Looking at a...
Unbeknownst to MAD, Vanessa Hargreaves was hurtling along nearby, having a grand old time. Having been cooped up on a woolly bear with only debutantes and country ranchers for company, she had taken to the ground with abandon, selling the Feint and crossing the naked country on Alphonse alone.
Despite the presence of her disquieting cargo, the journey through America was proving most relaxing. Most of the towns she came across were quiet, sheltered, and lacking deranged killers. They were oases in the wild, free country. In fact, she had learned traveling by engine or clockwork horse was something of a pastime, and some wanderers never settled down at all, choosing careers moving goods from one far-off town to another. Hargreaves found it freeing, which was surely the point.
The worst thing about the whole trip was having too much pie, and tending to Hargreaves’ monthly needs. Decent manufactured goods were scant, save the ever-present Ubique-branded canned hams and beefs, distinct in their green wrapping. Just as she was contemplating the difficulty of purchasing sanitary items, she heard the derailment as a clamorous din not two miles through the forest.
“You have a mission…you have a mission…” Hargreaves tried to remind herself, but she knew it was of no use. She changed course and began moving swiftly toward the distant clamor. Alphonse responded lightning-quick, his steel arms thrown out for balance, legs digging furrows into the path. The dirt and rocks flew behind his wheels, spraying debris in every direction. Alphonse was made of surer stuff than Hargreaves, taking the occasional pebble with hardly a ding of complaint. The inspector worried for the Cook box, hoping it would withstand the shaking from its position on the automata’s back.
It was not difficult to find the derailment. A plume of black smoke marked the place where it lay violently burning. The engine at the front had jumped the track and crammed itself into a small mountain pass like a book on the shelf, the one that clearly doesn’t fit but is made to anyway. The other cars of the train had fared no better—the momentum had dragged the first cars into the inferno, adding fuel to the fire. Hargreaves counted; five cars, most likely first-class by the melting gilding and what markings remained. She resigned herself to the fact that those people were doomed.
The densely packed steerage was in the middle, and had merely skidded off the tracks, digging great trenches into the surrounding greenery. They’d slid up to the front of the train, and people were struggling to climb out, away from the burning engine. The boiler was still in one piece, but making rather distressing sounds.
Hargreaves urged her iron titan closer to the burning wreck. Alphonse leaped down the hill, tires shredding on the rough rocks. No matter; his lumbering
steps took her down amidst the rent sides of the train, and his lobstered armor came between her and the occasional rivet, fired hot from its seat like a bullet. Quickly, she identified the nearest tragedy; an overturned car, closest to the burning hulk of the engine. Passengers in various states of injury were struggling to climb out of the windows.
“Tally-ho,” Hargreaves whispered, and toggled all the pressure into the automata’s legs. With a groan and a hiss, Alphonse answered by leaping completely over the car, his feet crushing out a coal fire about to lap at the plain washed wood. They were suddenly before the wreck of the train engine, waves of burning wind squeezing through Alphonse’s gaps.
Hargreaves toggled pressure once more, flipping a line of switches that made pleasingly efficient clicks. She dumped it into Alphonse’s arms to give her the most torque possible around his shoulder joins. His limbs shot forward, punching dents into a thick boiler plate—but holding the sheet in place, even as its rivets gouged dents into his chest and shoulders. The trembling wall of steel threatened to loose all the pressure of the ruined boiler onto the passengers behind Alphonse.
Heat from the burning engine and Alphonse’s own interior was overwhelming. Hargreaves stripped off her duster. She removed a piece of ribbon from her neat bun, tying it securely round one of Alphonse’s levers to keep him holding the plate in place. Only then did she climb out from between his head and shoulders, shielding the cockpit cavity with her duster as she did so. She heard it singe where hot sparks landed.
“You three!” Hargreaves called toward the nearest people, two men and a stout looking matron gazing at the wreck, their mouths agape. They were scorched from their escape, but did not seem hurt. “Help me pull the injured from the car!”
Hargreaves must have been a fright, with her leonine mane flying, bellowing orders like a general. The three survivors leaped into action, the men tackling a family just emerging from a broken window. The matron heaved herself at a bloody gentleman and hauled him out on her own. Hargreaves jumped down and helped to pull an elderly chap from the window nearest her before attending to the bloody gentleman.