Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon

by David Barnett

  Truth to tell, Jeb had no great problem with the Japanese, save for the fact they’d expelled British-American families from California. They were clean and polite, and San Fran these days was a place of serene gardens and huge pagodas, temples and highways swept by quiet little men in pale robes. The invasion had put out the Spaniards more than anybody, but between their constant feuding with the French back in Europe and their tenuous hold on their territory right down south, not to mention the thorn in their side that was the growing Confederacy down below the Mason-Dixon Wall, there wasn’t much they could do about it. So everybody was just biding their time, watching the Californian Meiji from afar, waiting to see what Mutsuhito would do.

  ’Course, all that was set to be blown right out of the water soon as Jeb got back to New York.

  * * *

  Jeb let his horse rest in the shade of a clutch of tall yellow pines. The bare short stumps that covered the hillside were testament to the speed and efficiency with which the Japanese had identified the natural resources in their new home and made use of them. When Jeb’s family had packed up and left San Fran it had been little more than a collection of wooden shacks and dirt tracks; British-American families such as the Harts had been paid a pioneer supplement by the governors back east to settle on the West Coast with the tacit agreement of the Spanish who were struggling to keep a grip on California. It was a good plan, and more and more families would have arrived over time, eventually necessitating a garrison of cavalrymen to protect British interests in the West and eventually persuade the Spanish to give up California for good. Nobody was expecting the Japanese, though. The Spanish weren’t strong enough to fend them off, and the British settlers didn’t have enough of a claim on the land.

  Jeb drank deeply from the canteen he filled in the shallows of the South Fork River, pouring the rest over his dusty head and refilling it for the next stage of his journey. He had to admit, the Japs had done a bang-up job on their Nyu Edo. It was remarkable what they’d achieved in a little over twenty years, turning that one-horse hick town into a thriving city that could, in time, match the British enclaves in the East.

  Jeb spat into the sand and rubbed a handful of water over the back of his neck. Given time. After what he’d seen, the Japs might be living on borrowed time—provided he got back to New York in one piece, of course, and depending on who got to hear what he had to say, and how they acted on it. He allowed himself a cracked-toothed smile. No wonder the Meiji was so darned secretive, with what they were sitting on. They didn’t like strangers, the Japanese, and from what Jeb understood, these guys, Mutsuhito’s lot, were the progressive ones. The old guard they’d split away from back in Japan were supposed to be even worse. He’d had to prowl around at night, hiding between the quiet temples, skulking around the factories that dotted the dry hillsides, helping himself to oranges and killing squirrels and even black-tailed deer to eat. A guy like Jeb tended to stand out among the Japs, and he was glad to be getting back east with his hide intact. He shielded his eyes and looked back toward where the sun was sinking over Nyu Edo, and the Pacific Ocean beyond that. Another drink for the horse from the rushing South Fork, then time to make tracks.

  Then he saw them. Seven black shapes, as still and silent as shadows, but ranged on the crest of a hill in broad sunlight, where shadows had no business. The silhouettes were bulky with armor and spiky with spears, bows, and blades. Jeb let the canteen fall from his hands into the dust.

  Samurai.

  The most venerable samurai families had stayed back in the old country, of course. It was only a handful of Japan’s fearsome warrior clans that had made the journey east to the new world, those who had long-standing feuds with the old emperor, those who sniffed the opportunity for fresh battles to fight. There were those who said the samurai had grown soft in the Californian Meiji, grown fat on oranges and the sake they made from the vineyards on the southern slopes of the mountains.

  Jeb knew there was no such thing as a samurai gone soft, and when the first wooden arrow fletched with goose feathers thunked into the tree behind him, he started saying his prayers. He wasn’t going to get out of this alive.

  The roar of the rifle just a yard from his left ear made him moan and drop to his knees. They had him surrounded. But one of the shadows on the hill crumpled and fell, raising a cloud of dust. Jeb blinked and looked around. There was a man there, a white man, who appeared to be hewn from the very landscape. He was dressed in a hodgepodge of brown leather and trail-battered furs, his boots reaching his knees, his blond hair straggling over his weathered face and caught in a ponytail at the back of his neck. In the crook of his arm he held a Winchester repeater, and pistols snug in a gun belt hung over his road-wearied, rough, dark denims.

  “You might want to get up off the floor,” said the stranger. “’Tis not the best position from which to shoot.”

  Jeb arched an eyebrow at the stranger’s speech, as much of a stew as his clothing, but there was no time to consider.

  There was a holler, some kind of war cry from the samurai, and they began to pelt down the hill. The stranger let off two more shots with his rifle; two more samurai fell, their momentum rolling them over in the soft dust. Another shot; this time the stranger missed.

  “Curses,” the man muttered. “Come on, now, one shot, one kill. One shot, one kill.” He grabbed Jeb by the scruff of his neck and pulled him to his feet. “Get behind the tree.”

  A volley of arrows whispered through the dry evening air as Jeb scuttled behind the trunk of the tree. The stranger pulled out a .45 from his left holster and let fly as he fired the Winchester single-handed. Two samurai fell. But the other two were feet away now, their katana drawn. They stopped, their black armor glinting in the dying light, their faces fierce beneath their helmets.

  “This man is under my protection,” said the stranger. “You leave him be.”

  One of the samurai growled something in Jap-speak. The other said, “He is a spy. He must face justice in Nyu Edo.”

  The stranger shrugged and his gun barked again. Six bullets from the rifle, reckoned Jeb. He hoped the man had a full chamber in his pistol. The warrior who had spoken Japanese took the bullet to the head and keeled over in a red mess. The stranger raised an eyebrow and said, “Bows and arrows won’t win you this land; the Indians learned that. Nor cold steel either. Gunmetal and powder will unite America. You go. You tell them that.”

  Jeb peered around the tree. He’d never heard of a samurai running from battle before, but this one was, digging into the soft soil with his katana to haul him back up the ridge. When he’d become a shadow once more and disappeared, Jeb let out a whoop.

  “Thank you, stranger,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  The man reloaded his .45 and holstered it. “Well, there’s a question,” he said. “They call me many things. The Indians call me Spirit, in more ways than I can remember. The witches of New Orleans like to call me Fantôme. The Mormons in New Jerusalem think I’m Satan, and the civilized folk of New York don’t believe in me at all!”

  Jeb blinked. He’d heard tell … he never thought the stories were real, though. “It’s you? The one they call the Nameless? It’s really you?”

  “’Tis not a name, as such, but one that will suffice.” He looked at Jeb a long time. “And you are what they said you were? A spy? For the British back east?”

  Jeb stared at him. He held out his hand and the man took it. Jeb said, “I might do a bit of … uh, mighty strong grip for a ghost.” He paused and said tentatively, “Uh, why’d you save me? I was given to understand you ain’t got much truck with the British.”

  The Nameless shrugged. “Perhaps I have less with the Japanese. The Spaniards have their own names for me, and I for them. I suppose I didn’t much like the odds against you.…”

  Jeb climbed on his horse, scrutinizing the other man. “If you don’t like the Japanese, Spaniards, or British, who the hell do you like?”

  “Americans,” said the
Nameless, smiling broadly. “I haven’t found any yet. I’m still looking.”

  Jeb sank his spurs into his horse’s sides, turning to wave at his savior as she broke out into a trot. As he’d half-expected, the man was gone.

  * * *

  Haruki Serizawa looked out across the bay from the window of his laboratory on the fourth floor of the squat brick building that occupied an elevated position in the hills above Nyu Edo. A thin ribbon of gray steam rose from the merchant ship from Kyoto that was unloading on the docks, bringing communications, lacquer-work knickknacks, and sides of beef. It would be loading up with oranges and nuts, pet lizards and cowhide leather. Japan and the Californian Meiji were in a state of diplomacy as chilled as the portions of beer-fed cattle that were being unloaded in trays of ice, but a polite trade was maintained. And the families separated by the wide, blue Pacific Ocean eagerly swapped news of the old country and the new world. Serizawa felt a sudden stab of longing for the Japan of his youth, for spring walks amid the falling blossoms, for the subtle turning of the seasons. Nyu Edo was a bastardized mess, in his opinion, the streets crazy with traditional pagodas jostling up against Western-style brick-and-stone edifices. An example of the … what was it the Germans called it? Dementia praecox. Schizophrenia. Serizawa had read about it in a journal from Europe. To be of split minds. That was Nyu Edo, clinging on to the traditions of Japan, embracing the mélange of the West. That, too, was Serizawa. He watched the stevedores, small as scorpions, finishing up unloading the steamer. He wondered if there was a letter for him among the crates of mail. A letter from his father.

  Serizawa turned his attention back to the sheets of white paper on his work top, scrawled with formulas and sketches. He took off his black-rimmed spectacles and pinched his nose. Why could he not solve the problem with the temperature regulators in the lower joints? The devices worked perfectly in the three pairs of upper joints, but the lower ones continued to stubbornly overheat. Perhaps it was that they were carrying more weight. He put his spectacles back on his nose and tapped his pencil on the paper. Perhaps … perhaps … but his mind would not focus. The sun was sinking rapidly over the bay. The screen whispered open behind him and he glanced over his shoulder, shuffling quickly off of the stool at the sight of the short, bald man in the white lab jacket.

  “Science Officer Morioka,” said Serizawa, bowing low.

  “Serizawa.” Morioka nodded. “How is your work proceeding?”

  “Very well,” lied Serizawa. “I think I have solved the problem of the weight distribution on the lower pinions and regulators.”

  Morioka nodded again, then said, “We have had a message from Kyoto. The British have been sighted near, or in, sector thirty-one.”

  Serizawa thought about this for what he believed to be a respectable amount of time, then said, “What does that mean, precisely, Science Officer?”

  “Perhaps nothing.” Morioka shrugged. “Perhaps everything. But it adds a certain urgency to our work here.”

  Serizawa glanced back at the setting sun. It was funny; in the West they called Japan the Land of the Rising Sun, but from the Californian Meiji, the old country was where the sun sank. He lived, ostensibly, in the West now. But he had had to go East to find it. He said carefully, “I was rather hoping, Science Officer…”

  “Urgency,” said Morioka again. “Perhaps another hour this evening, Serizawa. Perhaps two.”

  Serizawa bowed again. “Very good, Science Officer Morioka.”

  * * *

  Serizawa walked along the street in the pools of white light cast by the lanterns strung between poles, the warm, salty breeze washing over him from the sea. He would be late for his dinner. Again. He called in at the shrine and lit a candle, contemplating its flickering pale flame for a moment, wondering if those he had left behind had lit similar candles for him today. His mother, surely. His father … well.

  Serizawa’s home was situated halfway up a steep hill that ran upward from the central gardens. Nyu Edo was all hills, and his garden, though it had a pleasant, south-facing aspect, was inclined to such an extent that it made relaxing in the summer sun difficult. He let himself in and slid open the screens to the dining room, where his wife Akiko sat cross-legged before their ruined dinner.

  There was a small cake.

  “Happy birthday, Haruki,” she said, smiling up at him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Science Officer Morioka—”

  “I know,” she said. “Your work is very important.”

  “Michi?”

  “Asleep. I said I would wake her when you came home. But first, eat. I have some Kobe beef, though it is probably spoiled.”

  He sat across from her and took a chunk of the cold beef with a pair of chopsticks. “It is perfect,” he said. “You got it from the trade steamer today?”

  She nodded.

  “And was there anything else—?”

  “No letters, Haruki.”

  He sighed and picked up another sliver of beef. “I was foolish to expect anything.”

  Anger darkened Akiko’s tiny face. “You were not. It is your birthday and he is your father. He cannot carry on this ridiculous feud forever.”

  “He can, and he will. He has never forgiven us for leaving Japan.”

  Akiko poured two cups of sake. “It is his own fault we left. It is your father’s technology that keeps Emperor Kōmei alive beyond his natural years. If the emperor had lived a normal life, Mutsuhito would not have been forced to flee here to establish the progressive government that Japan deserves. And we would not have had to come here with him.”

  “My father is a brilliant man,” said Serizawa absently.

  “As are you,” said Akiko. “But you would not have flourished in Japan. And Kyoto would have been no place to raise our daughter. The world is changing at a pace far beyond what Japan can match, Haruki. Michi deserves that world, and all its wonders. We deserve it.”

  Serizawa stood and beckoned his wife to do the same. He embraced her warmly. “But I do not deserve you.”

  She kissed him, and he felt the smoothness of her kimono against his bare arms. He kissed her back, harder, until she pushed him gently away.

  “No, Haruki Serizawa, you do not deserve me. Working until such late hours on your birthday. But go and wake Michi, as I promised you would. Then I shall show you how lucky you are to have me, and you can show me how grateful you can be.”

  The taste of the sake on Akiko’s lips burning his own, he slid back the screens to their daughter’s room, letting the gaslight from the dining room play on her peaceful, sleeping face. She was seven years old, a true child of the Californian Meiji. He and Akiko, they carried too much of their old lives from Japan. It was the generation born in this strange new world who would be the making—or not—of the displaced Mutsuhito Empire. He could never let go of Japan, not truly. But Michi … as Akiko had said, she was now a citizen of a much wider world. He wondered what she would make of it.

  Serizawa crouched by her bed and stroked her forehead until it wrinkled and her eyes opened, puffy with sleep. She clutched the little wooden doll she had made at school. Kashira, she had called it, because it had no head. It wouldn’t stand up properly, kept falling over, until Serizawa gave her a little lecture on center of gravity. She had pulled the head off and it had stood up fine. “Daddy!” she said, and gave him a hug that caused his heart to split in two.

  “Hello, Prickly Pear,” he said softly. Her name, Michi, meant “pathway”—Akiko had chosen it, felt it embodied the pioneer spirit of the Californian Meiji. Serizawa always called her Prickly Pear. She was of the Californian soil, beautiful and strong yet with a spiky will all her own.

  “Happy birthday, Daddy,” she said. “I have a present for you.”

  From beneath her sheet she withdrew a crudely wrapped ball, no bigger than a pebble. “We went on a trip with school to the hills.”

  “The hills?” Serizawa frowned. Although Nyu Edo was safe, the outskirts of the Meiji we
re still subject to the attentions of the Americans from the British enclaves back east and bandits from the wild country in between. Just that morning he had heard that Texan slavers had been seen far to the south.

  “It was quite safe,” said Michi, in that same tone her mother used on him when he was being silly. “I found this in the river and kept it for you.”

  He unwrapped the layers of tissue until a small, hard lump fell into his hand. He held it up to the light shafting between the screens, turning it between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Isn’t it pretty?” said Michi, settling back into the low bed, her eyelids drooping. “Doesn’t it shine?”

  “Yes,” said Serizawa thoughtfully. It did shine indeed. It was a tiny nugget of what was unmistakably gold.

  Michi snored lightly, and Serizawa kissed her on her freshly smooth forehead. He heard Akiko quietly clearing away the dinner things, and he slipped the nugget into his pocket. It was time for him to show his wife how grateful he could be.

  4

  A VISIT FROM MR. WALSINGHAM

  The door to 23 Grosvenor Square banged open and Aloysius Bent stepped into the cool, tiled hallway, agreeably sniffing at the smells of cooking wafting from the kitchens. “By effing Christ, it’s good to be home!” he roared.

  Mrs. Cadwallader, the housekeeper, emerged from the study and threw her hands into the air. “Land’s sakes! Mr. Bent! And Mr. Smith!”

  Gideon elbowed past Bent, who remained stock-still in the doorway, breathing deeply of the aromas of Mrs. Cadwallader’s famous home cooking. He gave the housekeeper a warm embrace and she flapped her hands at him.

  “One for me, too, Sally,” said Bent, extending his fat arms around Mrs. Cadwallader, who wrinkled up her nose and pushed him away. “Come on, I might have a face like a stocking full of porridge, but I deserve a hug.”