by Kin S. Law
In the saturnalia of reclamation that followed, Albion somehow made his way to a sorting room, where valuables had been separated from the piles of clothing. There were old heirloom watches, jewelry, even a gold dagger that had somehow evaded the pawn. On a shelf in the back for unsorted acquisitions, he found his long coat, with Victoria and the Red Special still inside. Someone thrust him some trousers. As he was tired of wet hair in his eyes, Albion grabbed a cloth from the next shelf and tied it round his brow. It hadn’t occurred to him exactly how red the cloth was, or the way it hung off his head like a flag, or that his height and exposed chest set him apart from the mob. When he stood up again a man in the rabble cheered, and suddenly he found himself at the head of an army.
That was when the door at the end of the room opened, to reveal an extremely blonde person in an extremely low-cut bodice, her blue eyes wide as dinner saucers. An enormous pistol occupied one of her hands. The mob turned, the tips of their batons and rifles sparkling, their crowbars and pipes glinting off the murder shining from their eyes.
“Oh, hello, Hargreaves. How have you been?” asked Albion, cheerfully.
“The most difficult thing,” Albion said a little later, “is keeping them from killing each other.”
As he did, a couple of the stragglers at the back of the mob began to tussle over some of the nice things they had found in the private rooms.
“No! Leave it be,” shouted Albion. He gestured at them with his gun. “Save it for the buggers further up!”
Albion’s mob filled the hallway, which was thankfully quite grand, more of a common foyer than a connecting passage. The tussle stopped. There was still an air of relief at having their lives saved from the grinder. Albion was able to curb unnecessary loss of life, but as to the wholesale larceny and general mayhem, this he encouraged with aplomb.
“This is savagery! It’s barbaric, not to be borne,” said Hargreaves, watching a man chase down one of the escaped tarts, clearly without any intention of consent or payment. She had only just changed back into her riding trousers and boots, though she kept the bodice. It really looked very good on her. She had also appropriated a worn duster for her new gun and her knife, and now felt very much chuffed.
“The blood of the revolution is on the hands of the oppressor. You can try to stop them,” said Albion. He gestured with a bottle of ’89 La Fete in a philosophic way. “Or you can help me get to the good wines first.”
They had come up from the killing floor to the crazed orgy party Hargreaves first encountered. She had wanted to go back to destroy the egg that now held the contents of the Cook box, but they discovered the doors to the killing floor were locked. Through it came the sounds of hasty men, probably packing away the box and preparing the boxcars to leave. The loading engine was crammed into the incinerator, now cold. So Albion and Hargreaves decided to go around, over the top to try to catch the Ghost Train.
Apparently Burgess’ partnership had extended to building his pleasure palace on top of a Ubique abattoir, or as Albion suspected, the slaughterhouse below had been built specifically to service Jean Hallow’s Ghost Train. In any case all hell had broken loose as the prisoners fell upon the guests. It was nothing Albion could stop. These people were destitute, who had never seen such opulence, and they had no love for these perceived oppressors. Hargreaves wanted to run in amongst them and scream that they were not hurting anybody responsible, not changing anything, but she knew it was a pointless effort.
“Burgess is a crook! Let the place burn,” said Hargreaves, surprising herself. She took the bottle of wine from Albion now and had a good pull from the neck. She came up gasping. “But there must be something to be done about the savages.”
“There is. They’re doing it,” Albion said, pointing to where a man was toppling to the ground, clutching himself painfully. The lady of the evening who had kicked him in the gentleman’s area stood over him a moment. She spit in his face. Then she whooped, and joined in the looting. The girls only worked there, after all, and seemed to have no love for their employers.
“Democracy in action. Anarchy as order,” said Albion, who clearly did not give a damn. Hargreaves stamped her foot, but it did seem, in this limited respect, the people could be trusted to do what needed to be done. Maybe this too, was uniquely American.
Albion had set guards at the party’s doors while a core group looted the place for weapons. At his signal, they kicked down the double doors to find themselves in another large foyer cum hallway. They had been in only one of the party rooms, and it looked like there were several others branching off the foyer. It was too much celebration simply for a burlesque. Albion motioned for groups to split off and check the rooms. They were now deserted, though there were signs of a hasty exit.
“It bothers me we’ve seen neither hide nor hair of our captors,” said Hargreaves.
“And why were they holding a party?” mused Albion. “Something must have been going on…Hallow or Burgess must have some purpose bringing all this society out to the cabaret.”
“Why the devil do you suppose they went to the trouble? They clearly wished to preserve me for something,” mused Hargreaves. The obvious had occurred to her; even covered in soot, her legs were shapely, her bust impressive. She supposed even if Hallow had no interest, his clients would. But that was a flimsy reason. He could certainly buy all the girls he wanted, here at the last waystation before the Lands Beyond. It bothered Hargreaves that Hallow had put her up in a nice room, and simply thrown Albion into the grinder. Were they so different?
“I suspect,” answered Albion after a moment, “simple prudence. That hidden hold must have been built to supply the Ghost Train, and made for a convenient dumping ground for anybody Hallow or Burgess wanted to get rid of. It was best to dispose of me, who had seen their faces, and imprison you. You have sway with the Queen. The cans are probably a side business…waste not, want not.”
“What cans?” Hargreaves asked. When Albion described in detail what was under the mansion, Hargreaves had to run and retch for ten minutes into a plant. Then she came back, and they drank, and no more was said about it.
Albion led them through the Darklight Cabaret, which was now completely deserted. They stormed across the stage, kicking aside props and scenery. Someone knocked over the ghost light, which set flame to something backstage. Hastily, Albion led them out through the front doors, to emerge onto a large cul-de-sac which served as the cabaret’s front entryway. A gilt archway stood nearby, the entrance to the shuttle station back to the city. They could see the platform was deserted. Where was the Ghost Train?
Just as the last of their survivors exited the cabaret, the ornate windows burst outward. The flames had finally reached the front rooms. Now the elegant mansion began to burn to the ground, hopefully taking the hateful abattoir with it. Albion looked at the mob milling around in the manicured grounds, then turned to Hargreaves and shrugged. She knew the gesture for what it was. He had freed them from the abattoir, but he was no revolutionary. He was just a pirate.
Hargreaves found herself thinking on what she had seen, and the more terrible things she hadn’t. There had been a terrible elegance to the modest proposal found in that underground factory. In secret, the placeless had been quietly put to use, kicking and screaming, to nourish the rest of society. The abattoir was, in a gruesome way, understandable to Hargreaves, and that made it worse.
Albion and Hargreaves watched the cabaret burning to the ground. They sat and they drank, and as they drank a thick fog rolled in over the flames, giving it a warm halo. Hargreaves squinted. For a second there she thought she saw something in the darkness, where the smoke and the firelight met.
There!
There it was again!
“Albion, do you…?” said Hargreaves, only the pirate captain was on his feet, his guns in his hands. He pointed them up at the air between the burning hulk and the thick cloud of smoke. Hargreaves jammed her eyes open, even though the air was dry and her eyelids f
elt like sandpaper.
There was something there, something parting the veils of smoke and fog. The ornate, burning cabaret looked a little like a stage, and it seemed almost as if a hand was piercing the curtain. Knocking on the world’s door. Wanting to make an entrance...
“There’s something in the fog, no?” Hargreaves said. Was it an airship? A gust of wind, perhaps?
“I don’t think that’s just fog…” whispered Albion.
It was eerie. The fog was moving back and forth swaying, almost like... Hargreave’s breath caught in her throat, but it was Albion who put action to words.
“You there! Look out!” Albion screamed at the nearest knot of escapees.
They looked up at him, perhaps deafened by the crackling of the mansion, and they waved, smiling at their leader. And perhaps it was better that they were too far away to see Albion’s look of horror as a pale hand came down and crushed them out of existence. Only a red slick remained, sticking in strings to the hand as it lifted away, back into the mystifying fog.
Jean Hallow didn’t think it was important to count how many were crushed under his right hand.
It was of passing interest the hand operated well, certainly, but that was to be expected. Hallow had designed it himself, as he had designed automata for the Queen, for Ubique, and for a time, Mordemere. He had brought a medical perspective to the fleshy apparatus so favored by the aeon particle. Unlike Mordemere, who had hidden the flesh in a cocoon of steel gilt, Hallow had held it up, embraced it, intertwined it within his machines. Raised columns of it, erected monuments to it.
Seated on his throne of flesh, his will now reached every clattering limb and every inch of the throne, this seat of the soul he called the Grimaldi. Alphonse had been a sophomore effort, extraordinarily gifted by the powerful will of Vanessa Hargreaves. He had been sad to hear it had been destroyed.
Outside, Hallow had crafted a body to rival any dirigible gunship, an impenetrable, steam-driven figure of absolute terror. This shell of his had the bulk and power of a dirigible warship, and with the Cook engine back at the Grimaldi’s heart, it moved at the speed of thought. He was aware of the egg-shaped device, a warm, pulsing thing somewhere behind his back. Sealed in a chamber of arc-controlled flesh, he had surrounded himself with a warm, safe womb. He wondered if this was what if felt like in the warmth and nurture between a woman’s thighs. Not so different from a man, then. He’d had lovers, but none he could speak plainly to. His thoughts horrified them, he had found, and were best kept secret.
While Hallow had all these thoughts, he was also methodically, absent-mindedly crushing out the vermin on the lawn of the cabaret. A shame—he had admired the Darklight’s classic architecture. All of the meat would have to be destroyed, of course. It was important to use many of the Grimaldi’s weapons. He had to make a good show of it.
When he had killed enough of them, he flew the Grimaldi back up to the high cliff side where his Conqueror Worm was parked on its tracks. He had swiftly herded his guests into the train’s party car, and gotten them out of harm’s way. Now they were perched on the cliff where they had a clear view of the meat dying.
Hallow landed Grimaldi inside the open party car, and his guests cheered as he stepped out of it—behind a silk screen of course. When he emerged, he was strikingly handsome in a decorative cape that covered everything but his face and one pinstriped sleeve.
“Is all of this necessary?” complained Stanley Burgess as Hallow mingled through the crowd. “My cabaret... “
The dealer, Hallow thought disdainfully. The one whose usury and sin banquets had so gleefully funded this vision. It was Burgess who had taught Hallow to entertain these creatures in the first place. Soften them up, so to speak. Hallow felt disgusted by Burgess’ oily presence.
“Do not mourn your lost pleasure palace, Burgess,” said Hallow. “You will be able to build ten more. Enjoy the facilities. I assure you they are every bit the match of your cabaret.”
Hallow had to be careful. His head was growing fuzzy from being connected to the Grimaldi for an extended period of time. Yet, his arm was not quite healed, and if he left it for too long he would bleed to death within minutes. The throne, while comforting, had a warmth and coppery scent too irritably Freudian. The nuisances had to be borne, or dealt with. To business. The Ubique man was near. Hallow had to make a good show.
“Ubique wants a demonstration, and they will have it,” concluded Hallow. He stepped through the party.
“You will reimburse the cost yourself, Hallow,” grumbled Burgess.
“It will be my pleasure,” rumbled Hallow, and was pleased to see the other man shy away.
What was intriguing to Hallow was Burgess’s and some other guests’ apparent enjoyment of his display. Beads of sweat stood out on Burgess’ forehead. Hallow did not care what was happening. It was unfortunate for the rabble, they were going to die sooner or later regardless. Whether it was by his hand, literally or otherwise, was of no consequence to him. But he understood Burgess’ bloodlust when he saw it, and it was disgusting.
“Mr. Anderson?” Someone was trying to speak to Burgess’ neighbor, some contractor or another working for Ubique.
“Oh? Oh, yes, I was just watching that rather corpulent buck trying to escape. His leg is rather crushed.”
“Ah, the large dark fellow there.”
Hallow idly wondered how corpulent Anderson’s bank account was. He found it irritating that of the people assembled in this room, Hallow and Orb Weaver were the only ones under forty million in wealth, and under fifty in age. The dancers and the molls did not count. It tested his calm to think it had taken pleasuring all of these fat, depraved ticks to do what needed to be done. All these people were doomed, and only he and Orb Weaver knew it.
A fireball suddenly filled the windows nearly disrupting Hallow’s calm. A cry of excitement rose from the hall, followed by a titter of laughter. Part of the festivities! It was all a grand show. Breathtaking. But Hallow recoiled. Who dares? Hallow stalked back to the Grimaldi and climbed back in as a razzle of lightning lashed across the Conqueror Worm’s insulated flanks. It was no easy task, but his guests were distracted by the light show.
The Grimaldi shook from head to tail. It was difficult for Hallow to reassert control. His awareness was key.
Soon Hallow had his balance, and lifted off gently. He shifted the great lenses of Grimaldi’s eyes to bring something very small into view. It was Vanessa Hargreaves! And her pirate friend. That was right, he had left her in the mansion. Silly of him, really. Hallow respected Hargreaves, he hadn’t wanted her to die if she didn’t have to. Now that little mistake seemed to have cost him. The pirate raised something in his hand, and there was a flash. This time it was invisible, but in a moment he felt it viscerally; a smattering of fog water pulled into a swarm of bullets, searing painfully across the Grimaldi.
Pain! Oh, accursed pain. Pain screamed through his body like it had when he was a boy undergoing his father’s treatments. Part of him, the alchemist part, was stunned; an aeon reaction that drew moisture from the air, and forced it at an enemy. Most impressive.
Hallow lashed out with one of the wands at Grimaldi’s disposal to crush the bluff the pirate stood on. He imagined it would be like one of San Francisco’s famed earthquakes on that cliff now, the earth losing its cohesion, dumping them into the sea.
“Now, where were we?” said Hallow, his voice rumbling out from the Grimaldi’s seat of power. “Ah, yes. Mr. Anderson. So there’s the potential of the automata. Shall we see what the train’s cannons will do? I have a hankering to do in some pirate scum.”
Down below, Albion gawped at the enormous white shape coming to crush them out of existence, and he dropped the round he had been trying to load into the Red Special.
“Clemens! Buck up!”
Hargreaves pushed him over the edge of the bluff, near a decorative gazebo perched on the edge of the grounds. The grass of the cabaret ran right over the edge of the rocks, wi
th hardly a barrier to keep one from falling over the edge. Now Hargreaves did it on purpose, and just in time too. The ground roiled, like an upset table with them on it, and the gazebo tumbled away into the ocean. It didn’t make a sound as it disappeared into the waves.
Albion fumbled, feeling for the next round from his coat pocket even as the world came all topsy-turvy. At the last moment before they hit the rocks below, he locked the whammy bar, slotting the round into the chamber. Mere feet from the ground he pulled the trigger.
The resulting blast of wind blew everything away, rocks, dust, and the hearty lap of the Pacific tides. It also buoyed them up, just enough that he and Hargreaves slowed to a painful tumble in the stones instead of dashed to death upon them.
Albion opened his mouth to scream, but all that came was a wind-blown gargle. The Red Special was a glowing brand in his hands, kicking like a prize stallion. If he let go, he was sure they would be crushed by aeon forces run wild. These chord rounds had been Cid’s halfway measure, a blend of rare aeon dust and ground up bric-a-brac. Even Cid hadn’t been sure what firing one would do.
It suddenly tasted very salty in Albion’s open mouth. Overhead, boomed a sudden thunder, and they gaped as a glowing line seared through the fog. Something was being burned to cinders on the road overhead.
“No!”
Vanessa Hargreaves’ voice was an alarum in the murk. Albion came out of a red daze, his eyes open wide. There was a round in his left hand. His right hand was aimed up at the white shape overhead, like a spirit looming in the dark. The Red Special shook in his hand. Hagreaves must have feared he had been about to load it and fire, heedless of the innocents that would be caught in the ensuing blast.