Terra Mechanica: A Steampunk Anthology

by Jay Barnson

  The Doctor was standing over her shoulder now, panting and telling her that they would finish the last one together. But then the old man screamed. His face convulsed, his body writhing in agony as he fell to his knees. The rusted blade in his chest had gone all the way to the hilt. He wasn’t the only one on the beach with a secret weapon.

  “Doctor!” Nidj screamed as the skyrate behind her roared in laughter.

  “No!” the girl screamed. But the skyrate only roared louder. He lowered his shoulder into attack and burst forward, the modified scimitar in his hands whirling with teeth that longed to skewer her.

  Rage swept over her. It was a different kind of ether that poured through her veins, not numbing like the effects of the diethyl drug, but far more potent, like gasoline thrown upon an already raging fire.

  The skyrate lunged and attacked. Instinctively, she deflected, the arm catching the blade at the right moment and sending it back shivering again. The skyrate, quicker than the other two, recovered and parried, the strike aimed for her nose.

  Nidj pulled her head back just in time for the edge of one of the scimitar’s thousand teeth to slice her cheek. She staggered back. Then the move came to her. It came from the logic known only to animals in moments of great crisis, a secret science far more ancient and deadly born of our primordial biology.

  Whirling like a gear itself, she spun forward, her human hand gripping the jagged blade that cut all the way to the bone. Through the pain and fury, she spun until the killer of her guardian, her mentor, the greatest man she had ever known or would ever know, was no more. The crimson disk fell from her hand and returned immediately to its holster. The skyrate lay at her feet, his eyes welling with the shock of death at the hands of such an unassuming, little girl.

  Nidj ran back to the old man’s side. The Doctor shivered like a fish on his back. For the first time, looking down into the old man’s face, it seemed that he, too, knew fear—he, her fearless teacher, his wild and arrogant reaching above all earthly doubts her own model for survival. Now, as his cracked lips tried to form words, his reaching had come to an end.

  “Mein Lieb . . . ling,” the Doctor whispered, “You . . . are my . . . great . . . unsinkable bird. . .”

  And then the eyes went still.

  She removed the dagger from his chest, but he didn’t so much as flinch. He’s gone . . . I’m alone.

  The Bird was now a playground for fish. The rest of the skyrates’ flotilla would be hovering nearby. They would find the beach and the dead men soon. She cursed and squeezed her bleeding hand tighter to slow the flow of the blood. She had done it now, killed herself and let the old man get killed in the process. She had given him the fire one last time, but she was too late.

  She stared down through a wave of tears at his body, now looking so small, not defiant and devilish as before. She couldn’t leave him. But she couldn’t stay and die herself in the process. Then everything would be lost.

  At the far ring of the beach, the sun glinted off something metal. She covered her brow with her hand, blood dripping down her cheek, and squinted her eyes. It was the skyrate’s ship, a makeshift copy of the Bird, only jet-black not white, like a black swan lingering mateless in the surf.

  She kneeled down and kissed the old man on his cheek. In his unhearing ear she whispered all the love and thanks she had for him, for his hope that was now inside her, a hope that she would fulfill in honor of his memory, a far greater debt.

  She was Dr. Pax’s great unsinkable bird. All his inventions would never quite equal her, so balanced in both instinct and reason, yet passionate and relentless to pursue the preservation of her human, beating core, the likes of which all the projections of science would never accurately ascertain. Buried like a seed in her arm lay the genesis of that world-altering science, what the Doctor had died for in the end. The inventor was dead, but his apprentice and greatest invention would live on to carry the fire to other lands.

  As the skyrate’s ship rose from the ground, blowing the sand across the beach like a cyclone, Nidj clenched her bandaged hand and took one last look at the Doctor lying motionless on the beach, the bodies of the skyrates strewn all around him like offerings to some pagan god, the white sand darkened in tide pools of blood. It was an image she would never forget.

  And it was the image she would make the others see, as clear as day, until they, too, could not tear it from their eyes.

  Tobias Kincaid was sick to death of war. He'd been a mechanoid tech for the 5th Tennessee regiment, in charge of maintaining the robotic armaments that had been their best hope of defense. The horrors he had seen—and been responsible for—haunted him daily, and tested the faith his upbringing had instilled in him, making him feel far older than his nineteen years. He still found comfort in his prayers, but wasn’t sure anyone was listening.

  As a munitions officer, he had filled the little egg-shaped, chicken-legged waddlers he called “hatchlings” with gunpowder and set them trundling off toward the enemy to blow them to Kingdom Come. Only two feet high, a single brass hatchling could carry enough powder on its clockwork legs to dismember an entire group of men, raining body parts like hail and blood like tears.

  He had also maintained the huge, metal armament suits that could be donned by soldiers like the armor worn by knights of old. Bullets still pierced the suits, but it took a lot more of them to bring down the wearer—and they could do a lot of killing in the meantime. Peeling his friends out of their ruined armor had taken a little more of his soul. Their broken, bloodstained bodies sustained much more damage than those without the suits.

  None of those toys had made a bit of difference in the end anyway. The carnage on both sides . . . such a waste. A generation of young men decimated.

  The Confederates had lost, and he'd come home a little older, a little wiser . . . and a little bit broken. He wasn’t the carefree boy who had gone to war on a lark because his friends had. He had changed.

  He'd done his duty and served his country, but now that the war was officially over, he wanted nothing more than to get away from the memories of blood and carnage surrounding him. There were too many reminders—everywhere he looked.

  Tennessee had seen more than her share of destruction. Nashville, Chattanooga, Memphis, Shiloh . . . he couldn't even think of Shiloh without breaking into tears. The entire landscape of the state had changed. The ground had been soaked red by the blood of his comrades and their foes. Mass graves raised new hills. Forests had been leveled by both battle and expediency—the winters were cold in Tennessee, and trees would grow back. It still hurt.

  He had brought one of the hatchlings home with him. It was no use to the victors—one of its legs had been broken off and clumsily mended with baling wire, and the geared knee joint of the other leg was missing some teeth, accentuating its awkward gait. Its brass ovoid cylinder was pitted with dents.

  It wasn't much of a conversationalist, being as it had no mouth, but it was a great listener. He called it Chester, after his best friend who was killed in action, and the two of them got along tolerably well. Chester didn't berate him when he woke himself screaming in the middle of the night, sweating from remembered terror, the air rank and thick around him.

  Toby had been born and bred in the Tennessee hills, but he couldn’t face remaining where so many had died. He was losing a bit more of his soul every day he stayed.

  He thought long and hard about it, and decided that a change was in order. He had a hankering to see the world around him, so he sold his daddy's farm—what was left of it—and bought a ticket on the next steamship to the Old World. Maybe he was running from himself a little bit as well . . .

  Toby had been raised on his mother's fairy stories about Little People and talking animals until he was old enough to know better. By then, she wasn't around to challenge on them, having died when he was seven. Pa had no truck with children's stories and, after Ma died, he became hard and turned to the Lord’s Word for solace,replacing Ma’s tales with th
ose of the Bible, and punctuating the lessons with the back of his hand or a length of switch—a firm believer in “spare the rod, spoil the child.” The fairy tales had soon begun to fade from memory a bit, but the Bible stories had stuck fast. From their beginnings had grown the faith that saw him through many hard nights.

  When he was packing up the few things he wanted to keep from the homestead, however, he came across the illustrated copy of Grimm's Children's Tales that his mother had loved so well, and stuck it into his pack to remember her by. He left behind the family Bible—he didn't need it to reinforce his faith—that was his forever—and he didn’t need it to remember Pa by. He had the scars. Maybe things would have been different if Ma had lived.

  Chester fit in his gunny sack, and the two bags were the extent of his worldly possessions. Reading the fairy stories to Chester would give him something to do on the boat across the Atlantic.

  He spent his waking moments exploring every inch of the ship. He became a familiar face to the few living crew members needed to supervise and repair the automatons, asking hundreds of questions and helping with the maintenance. Of course, with the new steam engines and automated crew, the ocean crossing was over just as Toby began to get his sea legs.

  He landed in Cádiz, Spain and felt, for the first time, the overwhelming age of a city—the entire history of America was the blink of an eye to a city founded before the birth of Christ. One of the crew from the ship offered to show him the sights. He told Toby of a temple which had once stood on a hill at the edge of town—a temple that had fallen in the first century. Fallen over fifteen hundred years ago! Just to think of that . . .

  He felt brash and young being from America, yet to see its first hundred years . . . and he only a fifth of that himself. He couldn't understand most of what was said to him; the broken Spanish he had picked up from comrades in the war was nothing at all like the Castilian Spanish of the mainland. The ancient roadways and stone walls crushed him with their age, and Chester had difficulty maneuvering on the cobblestone streets.

  They soon moved on.

  The whole of Europe awaited him. Surely not all of the Continent bore this weight of age. There were new states fluctuating into being all the time, weren't there? And vast tracts of forest dotted the landscape, mountains rising in the distance he could retreat into if he needed somewhere less confining . . . He was eager to explore.

  He bought bread and cheese from a local market, completing his transaction with gestures as he knew his Spanish to be incomprehensible to a real Spaniard. With a bottle of beer and a canteen of water, all of his provisions were acquired. He'd spent weeks with less during the war. Chester's gunpowder reservoir now served as a handy carry-all for his food and drink.

  Hoisting his knapsack on his back and taking his gunny in hand, he started walking, helping Chester over the worst roots and ruts. The little automaton had known worse in the war. Certainly civilization had covered many of the greenwoods of legend, stone buildings comprising the new forests.

  Still, there were tracts of trees of a size and age he had never seen, and he reveled in the peace he found within them. The undergrowth was easy to navigate, giving Chester an easier time than the cobbled streets. Great forests of ash, oak, and pine towered over his head, the air redolent with the clean scent of growing. Gnarled branches showed the age they possessed, but here, the age comforted rather than intimidated him. It was a touch of home in unfamiliar surroundings. After the blood and death of the war, the beauty of nature soothed something in him he hadn't known needed soothing.

  One evening, Toby made camp at the base of a huge oak on the edge of a clearing. The tree provided a hollow in its roots to make his bed, and a patch of bare earth before the oak made a perfect fire circle. Soon, the crackle of flames punctuated the calls of the night birds heading out to hunt. Chester stood silent, the flames reflecting off his shiny brass. 'Twas all the companionship he needed.

  He toasted a chunk of bread topped with cheese over the fire, sipping from his canteen. The cheese sizzled enticingly, and his mouth watered just thinking of it. Meal for the gods . . .

  He was just about to take the first bite when he spotted a thin figure watching him from the shadows. The man was ragged and shivering, and Toby waved him over to the fire. “Come and have a seat. I have plenty for the both of us. It's too cold to stand in the dark when there is a fire before you. Sit and warm yourself.”

  The man sidled over and sat on a root outcropping at the edge of the firelight. “Thank you, kind sir.”His voice was breathless and hollow, like the wind through the trees. His clothes were more holes than cloth, and a tangled beard hung halfway down his chest. “Who's your friend then?”

  “He's a quiet sort, but a good walking companion. It's a mite chilly to be wandering the dark ways,” Toby commented again.“I'd be happy to have you share the fire for the night.” He broke off a piece of the toasted bread and handed it across to the man. “It ain't much, but I'm pleased to share what I've got.”

  The man took the food and ate it with wolfish haste.

  “Been awhile since you had anything to eat, huh? Here.” Toby handed his portion to the stranger. “I can miss a meal or two without no trouble.”

  “Much obliged,” mumbled the man around a mouthful of bread and cheese. “You wouldn't have any beer to wash it down, would you?”

  Toby thought of the bottle squirreled away in Chester's belly for just the right occasion. So far, he hadn't found it, but charity was its own reward, they said. He popped open the little mechanoid and pulled out the bottle, passing it over with a last regretful glance.

  “Thanks, I'm parched.” The man grinned, showing a lot of teeth in the firelight. They seemed in mighty good health for a man wandering. Toby found his tongue touching the hollow where he had lost two of his own.

  “You sound like you are far from home, too,” Toby remarked, snapping Chester back together. “Whereabouts you come from?”

  “Oh, here and there. I move around a great deal.”

  Toby shrugged. “None of my affair, if you don't want to say.” He stifled a yawn behind his hand. “Been a long day, sir. I think I'll just hit my bedroll.” He pulled his blankets out of his pack and prepared to make his bed.“Feel free to sleep by the fire.”

  “Before you settle in, Tobias, I'd like to discuss something with you.”

  In the process of shaking out his blankets, Toby froze. He wasn't stupid enough to have given this fellow his name. He thought of the old rifle he had debated bringing on this trip. Now he wished he had. Slowly and methodically, he finished making his bed and then turned to the stranger. “And just how do you be knowing my name, friend?” Toby put the slightest emphasis on the final word.

  “I know many things.” The man grinned again, and it seemed like even more teeth caught the firelight.

  Toby frowned, disconcerted by the illusion. “Well, I'm not sure what I feel about that, stranger. Seems like you have an advantage over me.”

  “They call me the Toymaker,” replied his companion. “It's the only name I know or care to answer to these days. A sample of my wares.” With a flourish, he produced a small brass box from one of his pockets and handed it to Toby.

  Toby took it cautiously and examined it. The box was etched with complex symbols, and there was an indention on the side.

  “Place your thumb on the depression,” the Toymaker told him with a wink.

  Pursing his lips in thought, Toby hesitated. It was a little thing. Nothing that small could be too dangerous . . . though he had seen grenades not much larger.

  With a shrug, Toby did as instructed. After all, the worst it could do was kill him, and that would be an adventure, wouldn’t it? The moment his thumb covered the depression, the box shifted in his hand. The lid rose on its own, lifting on thin scoping rods. Inside the box was a miniature room with a delicate dancer spinning across the floor. He could hear tinny music rising into the night, accompanying the dancer's movements. “What a cunning
thing!” he breathed.

  “Yes, isn't it?”

  Toby made to hand it back to the man, but The Toymaker waved a hand. “No, you keep it, my boy. A token of appreciation for the meal.”

  Frowning, Toby protested. “This is worth a darn sight more than some moldy bread and stale cheese.”

  “Maybe, but it is mine to dispense with, and I would like you to have it. I'm sure you will find a use for it someday.”

  Toby removed his thumb from the depression, and the lid slowly lowered, hiding the dancer and her chamber. “There must be something you want for it. It's too fine to just give away to a stranger, no matter if you do know my name.”

  “As a matter of fact, there is something you can do for me,” the Toymaker answered, stroking his beard.

  Toby followed the movement of the other's hand, fascinated. He could have sworn the beard was gray and patchy—unkempt to say the least. Now, it appeared silky and black in the firelight. The man's clothes were not as decrepit as they had first appeared either. He would swear such on his Bible.

  Toby wasn't much for superstition, but his fingers itched to cross himself. He restrained the impulse, fearing it would appear impolite.

  “What is it you want?” he asked the Toymaker.

  “I have a wager with a . . . companion of mine. He maintains that I cannot persuade a young man such as yourself to accept a task from me. Now, it is indeed a difficult task, but the reward for its completion is well worth the risk.”

  “What are you looking to propose?”

  “It's rather asocial experiment, if you will. The subject”—he gestured toward Toby—“—you, for example—would do without bath or barber for the next seven years. You would eschew change of clothes. You would stay away from church or temple, and pray to no god. You would tell no one your reasons for such behavior.