Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon

by David Barnett

  “There are no monsters,” said Akiko firmly, glaring at Serizawa. “You want to give her nightmares?”

  No, he wanted to say. I do not want to give our daughter nightmares. But there are monsters. Instead he said, “So it is agreed, then? You will stay here for now?”

  “For now,” sighed Akiko.

  “Good. Then I must go to work.”

  “Haruki,” said Akiko, her voice softer. “You are driving yourself into the ground. We came here to the Californian Meiji to start a new life away from your father. Not so you could kill yourself trying to escape his shadow.”

  Serizawa smiled sadly at his wife. “My father casts a very long shadow.”

  * * *

  After a moment’s pause, Serizawa decided to lock the door to his laboratory. There was a bathroom in there, and he had left Akiko and Michi some basic food that would last until later. The facility on the hills overlooking Nyu Edo was busier than it normally would be so late in the afternoon, and he had to be careful that his family was not discovered. Science Officer Morioka had little enough patience with Serizawa as it was.

  He made his way along the corridors to the main hangar, bustling with people and overseen from his glass office by Morioka, who nodded curtly from his desk when Serizawa slid back the doors and entered. Akiko was quite correct, of course; Serizawa was fighting to escape the shadow of his father. And it was people such as Science Officer Morioka who perpetuated the myth that it was somehow all his father’s fault that they had been forced to flee Japan and come to start a new shogunate in America in the first place. There were those who said that the Emperor Kōmei should rightly be dead by now, and that his son Mutsuhito would have taken his rightful place as the progressive ruler of the old country instead of taking his supporters across the sea to found a new dynasty twenty-three years ago.

  And yes, Serizawa supposed that Kōmei should be dead. There were few who survived smallpox. But then, not everyone had the benefit of Serizawa’s father as their court scientist. The senior Serizawa had contrived a contraption that was quite miraculous, a network of pipes and pumps that, each evening, flushed the emperor’s body with fresh blood, ejecting the diseased liquid. There was nothing that could stop each fresh infusion becoming contaminated with smallpox, but the new blood every night ensured that the emperor, though pitted and scarred with pockmarks, continued to survive.

  They did not call him the Blood Emperor for nothing. And there was no shortage of willing volunteers who sacrificed their own blood every day in tribute to their beloved emperor.

  Or so people said.

  Serizawa, of course, being young and idealistic and forward looking, had been as appalled as anyone by his father’s work, which was why he had made the pilgrimage with his young wife to the new world. And that was why the Serizawa name must be remembered for reasons other than his father’s work. That was why he had to succeed.

  As the doors slid closed behind him, Serizawa looked up to behold his work.

  Project: Jinzouningen.

  Even now, it took his breath away. Oh yes, they would remember Serizawa.

  * * *

  “Where are we going?”

  “For a little walk, Prickly Pear,” said Akiko. Curse Haruki for locking them in! She would have harsh words with him later. She stuck her tongue out and closed one eye as she maneuvered the hairpin into the lock chamber.

  “Daddy told us to stay here,” said Michi uncertainly.

  “Daddy is not the boss of this family; you will learn that,” said Akiko as there was a satisfying click from the lock. She had read how to do this in one of the English novels that sometimes made their way over from the British East Coast. She hadn’t been sure it would work, but evidently Haruki wasn’t the only one in the family with technical know-how.

  There was a white coat, of the type worn by Serizawa when he was working, hanging in the laboratory, and Akiko pulled it on over her kimono. Then she took Michi firmly by the hand and stepped out into the corridor. A blank-faced man pushing a trolley loaded with gears and springs nodded apologetically to her as he steered out of the way, and Akiko fell in behind him, glancing at the notices painted on the walls. They pointed to numbered rooms, occasionally bathrooms and canteens. Most people they passed either ignored them or gave them the merest cursory glance; everyone seemed very preoccupied. Perhaps this danger of Haruki’s was something serious, after all.

  The largest flow of people seemed to be in the direction of signs indicating a hangar of some description, so Akiko fell in with them. If anyone thought the presence of a small child was unusual, no one voiced it. Eventually they came to a tall set of sliding doors, guarded by two men in pale cotton all-in-one suits in the Western style.

  “Mummy,” whispered Michi. “They have guns.”

  The guards glanced at each other and frowned at the sight of Akiko and Michi. One held out his hand. “Identification papers, please.”

  There was a tap at the screen and the other guard turned to slide it back, allowing a scientist to exit as he pored over script on a long scroll. Beyond him, Akiko saw the unmistakable form of her husband.

  “Haruki!” she called, but his name died on her lips as she saw what was beyond him, towering over the swarming men in the huge hangar.

  * * *

  Serizawa pinched his nose tightly. The engineers had shored up the knees on Jinzouningen with steel plates riveted to either side of the joint, as he had instructed. But the stress reports were still showing undue pressure. Science Officer Morioka tapped the wooden board on which were clipped the latest figures.

  “Why, Serizawa, why? Why will this not work?”

  He looked up at Jinzouningen. It stood forty feet tall, a skeleton made of the strongest bamboo shipped in from the old country, the steel plates fashioned in the style of a samurai’s armor hiding the pistons and gears that powered the mechanical man from the steam furnace hidden in its bowels.

  “It will work,” Serizawa insisted. “It’s as ready as it ever will be.”

  But all the same, he looked at the numbers with dismay. Those stress points were just too …

  “Haruki!”

  Serizawa turned in astonishment as Akiko and Michi pushed past the guards. He heard the intake of breath from Morioka; too late now. He bent down and caught Michi in his arms.

  “Haruki…,” said Akiko, never taking her eyes from Jinzouningen. “This is what you have been working on…?”

  “It is like a giant Kashira,” said Michi happily. “Did you copy my doll, Daddy?”

  He smiled, then stopped and stared at her. “What did you say, Prickly Pear?”

  “Kashira,” she said. “My doll. I found it in our new room.”

  “Of course,” he said. He handed Michi to Akiko. “Of course.”

  He had been too fixated on making Jinzouningen look like what it was meant to be—a mechanical man. The head was where the cockpit was situated, but of course … it was making the giant too unstable. He tapped his forehead, thinking swiftly, then hailed the nearest engineer.

  “Take the head off!”

  The man looked doubtfully at Morioka, who frowned at Serizawa.

  “Take the head off!” Serizawa called again. “We don’t have enough time to make a pretty job of it, but we can sling the cockpit in the stomach cavity, just above the furnace. It will be terribly hot, but it will make the thing a good deal more stable.”

  Morioka nodded curtly, and Serizawa gave Akiko and Michi a huge kiss each, dancing delightedly on the spot. Michi clapped her hands.

  Then Morioka held up his hand as the noise began: a long, low, mournful note that drifted in through the open windows high in the hangar walls.

  “What is that?” asked Akiko.

  Serizawa felt the color drain from his face. It was the alarm, the one he had hoped never to hear.

  “We’re under attack,” he said.

  Morioka waved at the guards. “Get the pilots here, now!”

  Serizawa looked at Ji
nzouningen. The engineers had already removed the helmeted head and were installing the cockpit in the belly of the mechanical man. He said, “There isn’t time to get the pilots familiarized with the new setup.”

  Morioka stared at him. “What do you mean? That we should just stand by when we are so close? Let Nyu Edo be destroyed?”

  “They have only ever worked the cockpit from above,” said Serizawa swiftly. “The perspectives will have changed. I haven’t even had all the links hooked up completely. Only I know the shortcuts. Only I know how to work Jinzouningen.”

  Akiko was shaking her head. “Haruki, if you mean what I think you mean … then no.”

  “I have to,” he said. “I have to pilot Jinzouningen.”

  Morioka bowed stiffly. “Then may the spirits guide you, Serizawa, for the price of failure is high.” He rose and looked Serizawa in the eye. “For all of us.”

  As the klaxon wailed, Serizawa embraced his wife and child then set off at a run toward his giant mechanical man.

  26

  JINZOUNINGEN VS. APEP

  “What the fuck is that?” asked Lyle, leaning forward on the polished dashboard of the Skylady III’s bridge and peering into the gathering dusk.

  “I couldn’t have put it better myself, and I really effing mean that,” said Bent, at his side. He turned to Rowena. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”

  They had approached Nyu Edo from the east after traveling north from the remnants of Steamtown, making even better time than Rowena had promised. The city proper still lay out of sight, between the wooded hills that rose up on the outskirts of the Californian Meiji and the sunset-glittering sea beyond. The land was wild but showed the ceaseless activity of the Japanese, whole swathes of woodland razed for building and industry. There, on the hills, squatted a cluster of low brick buildings, with one tall tower, perhaps fifty feet or more, rising up from the center. It was beside this tower—one side opened up by way of tall sliding doors—that the focus of their attention was standing.

  Rowena shook her head. “It looks like a giant samurai. With no head.”

  “Is this the secret weapon you were talking about?” Bent asked Lyle.

  Rowena caught the look that passed between Lyle and Hart. A look that said this monstrous metal creature was as much news to them as it was to the rest. Lyle recovered quickly and said, “I suppose it must be.” He looked at Bent. “You were asking what sort of thing could destroy a city, Mr. Bent. I reckon we’re looking at it.”

  Rowena glanced out to starboard, where the brass dragon was keeping pace with the ’stat, its majestic metal wings catching the golden rays of the sinking sun. Was Apep equal to this giant? Who knew what it could do? She called over her shoulder for Chantico and Inez.

  “Gideon and Maria might need some help,” she said. “Aloysius, can you take everyone who can handle a gun down to the armory and break out the biggest artillery we have?”

  Lyle had a self-congratulatory air that she didn’t like one bit. She glanced at the letter from London that he had left on the dashboard. Something about it niggled at her. She was sure it was genuine, that the Prime Minister had indeed given the order for Gideon to be deployed to Nyu Edo. But all the same …

  She pushed the thought away. Apep was peeling away from them, flying high to get a better look at the giant from above. The enemy was standing stock-still, as though it were nothing more than a gigantic sculpture. Rowena had to grudgingly admit that Lyle had been right when he said the Japanese had a devastating weapon up their sleeves, even if he seemed a little … opportunistic about the whole thing. Soon it would be time to see just what the monster could do.

  As she slowed the Skylady III to better get into position with the observation deck facing the monster, she did pause to wonder why, if it was bent on the destruction of British interests in the east, the metal man seemed to be facing out to sea and the sun sinking in the west.

  * * *

  The furnace had only been fired up for minutes, but it was already hellishly hot in the makeshift cockpit. The engineers had torn out one of the armor plates from the belly of Jinzouningen to allow Serizawa an unfettered view, but there had been no time to install a windshield, so the warm breeze of the Nyu Edo evening caressed him, offering some relief from the heat below. A forest of levers was arrayed before the leather sling that served as his seat. He pulled at them in turn, flexing the steel muscles of the mechanical man. As he bent the knees of Jinzouningen and straightened again, he heard the protesting shriek of the over-tensioned joints. Relocating the cockpit had done much to alter the center of gravity—he sent a silent prayer of thanks to his Prickly Pear—but Jinzouningen was still unsteady on his feet. Serizawa raised the right arm, the wheels and pistons protesting and whirring above his head. The sight lines of the guns were based on a head-mounted cockpit; he would essentially be firing blind. The wrist-mounted guns were of his own design, each one surrounded by a cartridge “bracelet” containing more than three hundred bullets.

  He hoped it would be enough.

  Below him, Nyu Edo was eerily still save for the constant sonorous note of the alarm horn. The citizens had been herded off to makeshift shelters or ordered to stay indoors. Nyu Edo had a small standing army that was poorly equipped; though trade with the old country was brisk, Japan would not countenance selling weapons to the Californian Meiji, and neither Britain nor Spain trusted the fledgling state enough to offer guns and ammunition. The factories in Nyu Edo had produced third-rate copies of the few revolvers and rifles that had come their way, but they were notoriously inefficient and unreliable. There were the few samurai families who had made the journey across the sea to join the Meiji, of course, but that amounted to a handful of old men with swords and arrows.

  Which was why Nyu Edo relied upon the genius of Haruki Serizawa to save the day in the event of the darkness that now befell them.

  He swallowed and began to prepare Jinzouningen to walk down the hill toward the bay.

  The alarm’s wail suddenly faded away.

  And a most unexpected shadow fell across Serizawa.

  * * *

  “Good God,” said Gideon, leaning over Maria’s shoulder as Apep spiraled away from the Skylady III and soared up over the collection of buildings, the metal giant below them. “What do you think it is?”

  “Our enemy, by all accounts,” said Maria, her hands playing over the instrument panel. “Perhaps the more pertinent question should be, what can it do?”

  Ahead of them, down the hill, the city of Nyu Edo nestled by the sea. Its ordered streets were lined with low wooden houses, a mixture of styles that were both recognizably Western and exotically foreign. Pagoda roofs with carefully raked gravel paths snaked between them. Half a dozen boats bobbed in the shallows of the harbor. There were no people that Gideon could see.

  Suddenly the giant moved, turning with exaggerated, stiff movements on the grassy hill to face their approach. It raised its right arm as though pointing accusingly at them.

  “A mechanical man,” said Gideon wonderingly. “It must be forty feet tall. Can we bring it down?”

  Maria shrugged and cast her hands in an intricate pattern over the artifacts. Gideon held on as Apep banked sharply, descending low until its feathery shadow skimmed the ravaged woodland, and coming in straight and fast at the giant. The crocodilian maw opened with a grinding of gears, and Maria let loose a short burst of fireballs, generated by unknown means deep within Apep’s brass body; whether ancient science or eldritch magic, Gideon was unsure. The fireballs engulfed the giant and it staggered backward, its arm still raised. But it remained on its wide metal feet, and the outstretched arm suddenly spat at them with a staccato roar.

  Maria pulled the dragon up as the bullets began to impact upon its brass hide. None penetrated, though Gideon felt Apep shudder with each true hit. He smiled as Maria righted the dragon. “Well, if that’s the best it’s got…”

  “Gideon…”

  He looked down at the patch
of wetness spreading across Maria’s torso. “You were hit!”

  She shook her head. “No, not me. A bullet must have punctured the underside of the dragon. Gideon, I felt it.”

  Her right arm was moving stiffly and jerkily, and oil and water leaked from beneath her sleeve. “And this is where the dragon was hit on the wing.” She looked at him. “Gideon, whatever change has been wrought in the artifact in my head, it has somehow linked me more closely to Apep than I could have imagined. We are more as one than ever before. Which means…”

  Gideon looked out the porthole at the giant. “Which means if Apep is damaged badly, you could … you could die?”

  Maria smiled tightly. “Then we had better bring the mechanical man down first.”

  * * *

  Serizawa’s first thought was that the bamboo skeleton might have been a mistake. Although it was as hard as iron, he had not considered that it was still wood, still flammable. As he battered at the smoldering sections of the rib cage within which he was suspended, he also thought that Jinzouningen had not been created with battling a fire-breathing flying serpent in mind. So perhaps he should stop chiding himself and start thinking about surviving.

  The thing that was attacking him was definitely a machine, piloted by human beings. The whys and wherefores of it could be debated later. Now he had to bring it down so that he could get on with the task at hand. An airship was circling some distance away. Evidently this was a concerted attack force on Nyu Edo. The fools. There might be nothing left for them to invade if he did not turn Jinzouningen back toward the sea.

  Brass and steel the flying dragon might be, but it was not impervious, he learned not long after its opening salvo of fireballs. He had ducked behind the steel panel in front of him as the fireballs exploded, adding to the already unbearable heat from the coal furnace below. The fire was causing all kinds of problems with the rivet joints—Serizawa made a mental note to look at that in future, then another one to concentrate on surviving so there was a future—but the line to the guns was still working fine, and he let go with a ten-second round of bullets. The dragon had kept coming but shuddered at his onslaught. Perhaps he had a chance if he could concentrate his fire for long enough to cause some real damage. As the dragon began to fly low at him for another burst of fire, Serizawa brought up the left arm to double his firepower. If only he had some proper sight lines to follow. He pushed both levers down, hard.