by Ewing, Al
GALVANIC AETHER A REALITY STOP SOURCE OF POWER GREATER THAN ANY KNOWN STOP MEET ME ON DEVILS EYE MESA IN COLORADO IN ONE WEEK FOR DEMONSTRATION OF ULTIMATE POWER THAT WILL END DOMINION OF STEAM FOREVER STOP YOU SHOULD HAVE LISTENED TO ME STOP
THOMAS ALVA EDISON
Steele nodded grimly. “‘You should have listened to me.’ See, in my line of work, that’s what we call a threat.”
Reed shook his head. “I hardly think so. An ‘I-told-you-so’ at most. I’m more interested in this business of ‘galvanic aether’...”
“I’m guessing that’s that lightning-power George was talking about earlier.”
“I’m not sure. From what Mr Westinghouse told me, Edison was always talking about galvanic force, or galvanic current. In the newspaper adverts, he described a great War of Currents – water versus lightning.”
Steele scowled. “You’d think war between plain men was bloody enough. So what’s aether in relation to that?”
“Honestly, I –”
“The simple version. Some of us didn’t get your fancy schooling.”
“The simple version, Mister Steele, is I don’t know. In classical mythology, aether is the air breathed by the Gods – the substance of a plane higher than our own, above the terrestrial sphere. If you ask me, his use of the term is ominous, very ominous.” Reed bit his lip, looking towards his metal man, as if for protection. And, as if responding to his need, the Locomotive Man let out another scream from his whistle.
“You think he might be even crazier than last time – God damn it!” Steele tugged on Jonah’s rains, keeping him from bucking. “Any way you can do something about that damned whistle?”
“Hmm? Oh, I’ll work on it in the next iteration,” Reed murmured. “Crazy... I don’t know if I would call him that. Apparently he provided a couple of demonstrations that seemed to show he was onto something – some business with magnets and copper wire...”
“Well,” Steele murmured, “George doesn’t call me in to deal with peaceable types, and this feller sounds like his powder’s about ready to blow.”
“Ah yes.” Reed sighed. “Now that, I can agree with. That’s why Mister Westinghouse sent me, as I understand it – he thought if he went to see what Edison was doing himself, it might stir up old wounds...” He bit his lip, staring ahead at the road. “Or I might be wrong. It’s possible he thought I might see something in Edison’s ideas that he missed. Perhaps... if I saw what Edison was doing...” He paused a second, like he was about to say more, then shook his head and turned away.
That piqued Steele’s curiosity. “What?”
Reed looked him in the eye for a spell, hesitating – then when he spoke, his voice shook. “Mister Steele... do you...” He paused again, then spat it out. “Do you feel as though the world should be different from what it is?”
Steele stared at Reed for a long moment. “Kind of a dumb question, ain’t it?”
Reed blushed red, and looked back towards the unfolding road. Steele took another long drag on his cigar. “Tell you what, Reed, why don’t you tell me how you think it oughtta be different, and then I’ll tell you if I feel the same way.”
Reed took a deep breath, not quite trusting himself to look Steele in the eye. This time, when he spoke, his voice was down to a whisper. “You must not think me mad, sir. Pray do not think me mad.”
Steele shrugged. “You built a train with legs to carry you around like a damn caliph, Mister Reed. It’s a mite too late to worry ’bout what I think.”
Reed laughed despite himself, then his manner grew sombre again. “I... have had dreams, sir. Dreams in which the world is altered, almost imperceptibly. The differences are subtle, but...” He ran his tongue over dry lips. “Fireflies in glass bulbs. Automatic telegraphs festooned with wires. A system of lightning and wire spanning this country. The beginning of a world of wonders... you must understand, I would not trouble myself with such visions if... if they weren’t so vivid. If it all didn’t seem so real. So... so horribly plausible. So unlike...” He paused, staring into the distance. “So unlike our world, Mister Steele.” He turned to Steele again, and now there was an almost feverish look in his eye. “Doesn’t it seem strange to you? Doesn’t it seem like we’re missing something basic? Something we should have?”
He caught the look in Jacob Steele’s eye, and looked away, composing himself. “I... I apologise. I must sound to you like some babbling half-wit. I just... I’m just trying to explain...”
Steele looked at him for a moment. “Let’s just ride a spell, Mister Reed. Figure we’ll both feel better once the sun’s a little lower.”
Reed swallowed, and nodded soberly, not trusting himself to speak further.
They didn’t speak again until they reached the town.
DEVIL’S GULCH WAS a town about ten miles out from the mesa, and a good place to stop and re-fill the canteens with water and feed Jonah. Steele figured there’d be a place where the two of them could stay for the night, assuming those who ran it were happy keeping the Locomotive Man with their horses.
“We’ll stop here a brief spell. Figure we can reach the top of the mesa ’fore sundown – can’t be more’n an hour’s ride from here.” Steele said, tying Jonah to a rail outside the saloon. “Once we’ve talked to Edison, we can head back here and rest up.”
Reed sighed. “If he allows us to.”
“One way or another, he’ll do that.” Steele looked around at the townsfolk. A small crowd had gathered to stare at Reed’s wagon and at the Locomotive Man, and a few wags in the crowd were already passing comment that whoever was inside it must be all-fired hot.
“C’mon, mister, y’all ain’t foolin’ nobody!” One of them called out. “Why don’t you get whatever fella you got in there t’unscrew that dome o’ his an’ show his face?”
Steele couldn’t help but crack a smile, but Reed seemed to take it personally. “The Locomotive Man is real, sir! And I will have you know it is the wonder of the age!” He yelled the words back, but the crowd only intensified their jeering.
“Y’all gonna sell us some snake-oil medicine, Mister? I could sure use some tonic!” One of the younger ones shouted.
“Yer too young for tonic, boy!” His father bellowed, and a ripple of laughter spread through the crowd. Steele couldn’t help but chuckle himself, holding up his palms in apology when Reed turned his furious gaze on him.
“Now, now, Mister Reed. You surely must admit that wagon of yours looks the part.”
Reed fumed, shaking his head. “By God, they’ll learn. When there’s a Locomotive Man in every town, on every street corner, they’ll remember this day for the rest of their lives! The day they saw the first! They’ll feel foolish then, I’ll bet –”
“Hey, you! Metal man!” The boy yelled. “Why don’t you do a trick fer us?”
Reed grimaced. “There’ll be no tricks!” He shouted back. “This is a marvel of science! It’s not a toy!”
Steele shook his head. “Could’ve fooled me –”
“Steele!”
The cry cut through the air like a thrown knife. By the time Steele turned to face it, his iron was already in his hand.
“Grey Owl. By God.”
The man pushing his way through the crowd was an Indian, an outcast from one of the Ute tribes, and a man whom Jacob Steele knew well. He walked with a slight limp, and that was the legacy of their last meeting, when Steele had put three bullets in him and watched him take the fall from a high cliff into a river. He’d always figured that if the day came when he ever saw Grey Owl again, it’d be in the next world – yet here he was, alive and well.
“Jacob Steele.” Grey Owl’s eyes were burning with hate. “I’ve had visions of meeting you again.”
Steele slipped his firearm back in its holster. “Well, I can’t say the same. We all figured you was a dead man. Hell, I collected the bounty on you. You’ve done a hell of a job of hiding yourself these last two years.”
“Not hiding.” Grey O
wl’s gnarled hands hovered over the pearl-handled revolvers he wore at his hip – the same guns he’d taken from Colonel Armstrong, after revenging himself for the massacre at Bitter Falls. “Waiting.”
Steele’s own gun-arm was twitching, and he found himself taking up a stance. Gunfights had their own cruel gravity, and he felt the two of them being drawn towards that irrevocable moment when one of them would kill the other. “Well, here I am,” he said slowly, “but I don’t much want to draw on you, Grey Owl. We done that dance once already. ’Sides... hell, I figure you had a right to do what you done. Lord knows that damn fool deserved worse.”
“Did he? Is that why you hunted me across three states, then? Is that why you put three bullets in my hide?” Grey Owl spat, furiously, clenching and unclenching his fists in preparation for the draw. “Or was it for a fistful of white man’s money?”
Steele stared Grey Owl in the eye. He didn’t dare to blink. The baying of the crowd, Reed and his ridiculous metal monster – all that was forgotten now. It was just him and his enemy, a man skilled enough to drop him right here if he should falter. For an instant, he found himself thinking back to the big talker in Fort Woodson, and he realised it’d been a hell of a long time since anyone had given him a proper fight, at that.
“I hunted you ’cause I knew others were hunting you just as hard. Men like that evil son of a bitch Cogburn, or Butcher Terrill. I knew what they’d do, and you deserved better than bein’ scalped or lynched or tortured for fun by the kind of man who’d look at you and see just one more damned savage in need of killing. Better a clean bullet from a man who understood. Least that’s how I figured it.” He licked his lips, feeling a trickle of sweat at his temple. “Was I wrong?”
Grey Owl hesitated a moment, then scowled. “Maybe not. But either way, I plan to repay that kindness here and now. Go for your –”
“Why?” Steele snapped. “For what? Why the hell do we need to kill each other today? Is it ’cause I shot you? You didn’t know something like that was coming, you’re a damn fool, and I never took you for that. Damn it all...” He paused a second. “You know I gave the bounty money to Red Cloud?”
“What?” Grey Owl blinked at the mention of his brother’s name.
“To help raise your boy. I don’t know what the hell he did with it. He might have burned it, for all I know. He seemed pretty mad at me at the time.” Steele sighed and shook his head. “But there it is. And now here’s you and me at the ends of each other’s guns, and I can’t think of a single reason why that ought to be so.”
“There’s bad blood between us,” Grey Owl frowned, but his hands seemed relaxed now, no longer flexing.
“There’s worse blood against us, and you know it.”
Steele risked a glance at the crowd, who were looking angry and bored. A couple at the back were catcalling,“Draw, already! Ya yeller chickens!” Grey Owl frowned, turning his head as if noticing them for the first time. He paused for a moment, then spoke in a softer tone.
“These people...” He hesitated, then scowled. “They do not see men.”
“They see a dog fight. And if one of us was white, they’d see a hero.” Steele straightened. “I’m done talking, Grey Owl. Are we gonna do this, or are we gonna walk away?”
Grey Owl stiffened, and resumed his stance, hands flexing, poised once again over the twin revolvers. Everything in his stance showed he was readying himself to shoot, and Steele readied himself likewise, in case the other man should decide to slap leather after all. But when Steele looked in Grey Owl’s eyes, the fire of revenge that had started the confrontation had been replaced by a weariness, a disgust with the whole business.
He relaxed. There’d be no gunfight today.
Then he heard the shriek of a steam whistle, and Reed yelling like a banshee – “Forward the Locomotive Man!” – and a ton of clanking iron and brass shoved past him, knocking him to the ground, making a beeline for the other man.
“No!” Steele shouted, as Grey Owl’s eyes widened at the monstrosity. Up until now, like all the rest of the townsfolk, he’d seen it as another medicine show, a snake-oil demonstration that his enemy just happened to be riding with. Now, the terrifying reality bore down on him in all its cold, mechanical fury. He drew, firing at the Locomotive Man’s centre mass, and the bullets pinged off the metal as if they were bee stings.
“Call it off!” Steele yelled over the din, drawing his own gun and aiming for the control mechanisms on the thing’s back, trying to determine which might shut the damned monster off once and for all. “Call it off, Reed, you son of a bitch!” He fired, pulling the trigger again and again until the chamber was empty, and the bullets shattered dials and broke off switches, but nothing seemed to stop the Locomotive Man’s charge.
One of the ricochets from Grey Owl’s own pistols hit him in the chest, sending him staggering back, but the machine caught his head in its iron grip before he could fall. Steele heard him cry out something in the Ute language, and then the Locomotive Man crushed his head like an eggshell, sending a spray of blood and brains into the dirt.
It let what was left fall, and stomped back to its place at the wagon.
Not a soul in the crowd spoke.
“You god-damned son of a bitch!” Steele stormed over, grabbed Reed by the lapels and pulled him bodily down off the front seat of his damn wagon and into the dirt, and then slammed him with a haymaker across the jaw for good measure. “You miserable bastard, that was a man! That was a man!”
“H-he was going to shoot you –” Reed stammered, and Steele’s knuckles caught him again, sending his glasses into the dirt and blacking his eye.
“He was gonna walk away! Get up, you god-damn coward! Get up!”
The crowd rumbled, growing ugly. A small voice piped up from the back: “Why don’t that metal man kill that boy already?” The rumbling grew louder, more insistent, and one of the men at the front of the mob picked a stone off the ground and threw it at Steele’s head.
He spun around and shot it from the air.
Then he lifted his hat and let the crowd see what was in his eyes. “I never shot an unarmed man yet,” he growled. “If I start, I can’t promise I’m gonna stop.”
The crowd scattered.
“Those jackasses are gonna grow their balls back soon enough,” Steele growled. “On your feet, you lousy bastard. Get your damn metal man up and running.”
Reed cowered in the dirt, scrabbling for his glasses. “I – you broke the controls – I need to check if –”
Steele hauled him up by the scruff of his neck. “Get it running and get the hell out of here! Now!” He pushed Reed roughly into the wagon, and the younger man scrambled up onto it, reading the broken dials as best he could and flipping what switches were left. Eventually, the Locomotive Man juddered into life. Satisfied, Steele untied Jonah and led him over to the spot Grey Owl had fallen.
As the metal man slowly began to trundle forwards, building up speed, Steele hefted Grey Owl’s body up over one shoulder, then tossed it into the back of the wagon as it passed.
“You can’t just throw a body into –” Reed protested.
“Shut up, you snake in the grass!” Steele spat, swinging up onto Jonah’s back and spurring him to a trot. His eyes roamed the empty street, expecting trouble, but none came, and soon they’d left Devil’s Gulch behind them. “There. Now, we got an appointment to keep up on that mesa, and I’m anxious to be done with it. After that, we’ll bury this man best we can according to custom. Right now I’m of a mood to make you dig the rocks out with your own two hands.”
“Steele, the man wanted to kill you –”
“Shut up, I said.”
“For God’s sake, he was a savage –”
Steele drew his gun.
“You say one more word. Just one. I will kill you where you sit.”
Reed stared into the barrel of the revolver. He didn’t say a word, and after a pause, Steele put his iron away.
“After we’
re done with the burial, I’m going back to Fort Woodson to tell that son of a bitch Westinghouse just where he can stick his damn retainer. I’m done with all you sons of bitches.”
THEY WERE HALFWAY up the long spiral path to the crown of the mesa, and the sun was an angry red ball, low on the horizon.
The journey had taken longer than either man had expected, and the Locomotive Man seemed to be moving slower with every step. From underneath the brass dome, there was the usual whirring and clattering, but occasionally Franklin Reed would hear a fearful grinding sound emanate from the delicate workings within, which frightened him. Finally, he had to speak: “I don’t like these noises...”
“I thought I told you to shut up.” Steele’s voice was weary, and his anger was gone. Reed considered the situation for a moment, then took his courage in his hands.
“I don’t believe you are going to shoot me, Mister Steele.”
Steele sighed. “Well, maybe I’ll just shoot some unnecessary part of you, such as your pecker. Or bind and gag you and stick you in the back of your own damn wagon to pass the time with the man you murdered.”
Reed bristled, and anger crept into his voice. “I would not call it murder, sir. From where I was sitting he was ready to murder you, at least until I intervened –”
“Shut up, God damn it.” Steele shook his head, looking more tired than ever. He gestured at the Locomotive Man as it sluggishly toiled up the slope, dragging its burden behind it. “What the hell possessed you to build that damn thing anyway? What’s it even for, aside from pulling you around?”
“I designed it to ease the burdens of life, Mister Steele.” Reed’s tone was frosty. “Once the Locomotive Man is mass-produced, it will remove the difficult tasks and drudgeries from life. Ploughing a field, for example, or digging a mine –”
“Or killing a man.”
Reed blinked. “Excuse me?”
Steele had a disgusted look on his face, as though Reed’s stupidity was a noxious substance that he’s stepped in or got on his hands. “What is it like living in that head of yours, Reed? That damn metal man of yours ain’t for pulling wagons or planting seed. If you’d swapped your monster out for a good horse we’d have been there and back by now. No, I’ve seen the one thing your fancy Locomotive Man’s good for, and that’s killing folks. You honestly think the world ain’t gonna pick up on that too?”