Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl

by David Barnett

  “For the greater good, though,” said Gideon, but doubtfully.

  Bent laughed. “You really think so? You think the government’s more shadowy side really does anything to benefit the likes of me and you?”

  “Einstein was working on an airship to the moon,” said Gideon. “I read it in his notes. That is why he was given the Atlantic Artifact.”

  Bent shrugged. “That’s as may be. But why go to the moon? So you and me can stand in Trafalgar Square and wave our flags? You can bet your last farthing if they want to go to the moon there’ll be something in it other than a couple of verses of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’.”

  Gideon sighed. “You are awfully cynical, Bent. So that excuses Reed destroying London?”

  “Of course it doesn’t,” said Bent. “But it makes you think, don’t it?”

  Gideon walked over to Bathory. “How are you, Countess?”

  She looked up. “Why do men ruin everything?”

  Gideon had no answer, and he withdrew quietly. He turned to where Trigger sat, hunched over on a bench to one side of the bridge, staring listlessly at his hands. Bent had a broken arm and a fierce-looking injury to his head. Stoker was dead, Trigger a pale shadow of a man. He had found Maria and lost her again, to God knew what. Was this what heroes did—cause everything they touched to crumble to dust?

  “I should never have brought us all here,” Trigger said without looking up. “Now he will destroy London with that infernal device.” He buried his face in his pale, shaking hands. “What have I done? What is John doing?”

  “We must stop him,” said Gideon softly. He wanted to be angry with Trigger, wanted to shout at him and hit him for his lies, for his fiction. But looking at the broken old man, he felt only pity. He said, “But I cannot do it alone. I need you, Lucian.”

  “What use am I?” spat Trigger. “An effete old man, a spinner of tales, nothing more. Abandoned by my lover.” He looked up at Gideon. “Do you think him mad? Or can he really be evil, and I have been blinded by love all these years?”

  Gideon could easily believe either. He asked, “What do you think, Lucian?”

  “Something has caused him to stop loving me,” said Trigger, and tears rolled down his dusty cheeks. “I think that even if he were driven mad by his ordeal in the pyramid, something of our love would remain.”

  “One way or the other, we will bring him to his senses, Lucian. Save London. But we must do it together, yes?”

  Trigger looked at him, then down at his feet again. “I am of no use to you, Gideon. The fate of London is in your hands.”

  They left Alexandria far behind them and bore north by northwest, the glittering Aegean Sea below. Gideon peered through the windows at the black dot in the distance. “Is that it? Apep?”

  Cockayne nodded. “It’s moving quickly, but so are we. The Yellow Rose is a little speedier than the ship you came in on.” He ruminated for a moment. “Was it bad down there? In the pyramid?”

  Gideon nodded. “I had thought I was going on a grand adventure. I didn’t realize people would die.”

  Cockayne shrugged. “It ain’t like the stories, that’s for sure. Trigger presents what you might call a sanitized version of events for public consumption. The reality . . . well. You saw what it was like firsthand.” He paused. “It gets easier, though. Easier to deal with. Next time, you’ll have learned lessons. You’ll handle things differently. You’ll still screw up, but less so. And the time after that . . . It gets better, is all.”

  Gideon stared at him. “You think there’ll be a next time?”

  Cockayne kept his eyes on the horizon. “From what I heard, Gideon, you did pretty good. Have faith in yourself. It’s the only way you’ll survive, if you’re going to be an adventurer.”

  Unless Gideon was very mistaken, Louis Cockayne had just as near as damnation paid him a compliment. “I think I’ll go to the galley, see if I can find some food for us all,” he said.

  Cockayne nodded. “You do that, Gideon.” He winked at him and returned to his contemplation of the sky.

  Over lunch in the stateroom, Cockayne asked, “So, what’s the plan of engagement?”

  Gideon had to confess he didn’t have one. “Rule number one, kid,” said Cockayne. “Be prepared. Rule number two, if you can’t be prepared, be lucky.”

  Fanshawe cocked an eyebrow. “What’s this, are you two now in some kind of adventurers’ club or something?”

  Cockayne held up his hands. “I’m merely the pilot for this endeavor. Please, don’t anyone labor under the misapprehension that I will be risking my life to save London. I just wondered what the hell you plan to do when we catch up with that goddamn dragon.”

  Gideon looked around. “Does anyone have any ideas?”

  Cockayne pushed his hat back on his head. “Can’t say I’ve ever fought a dragon before, so I can’t offer you much in the way of advice. But think about it. Whatever that thing is, however it’s actually flying, whether it’s ancient science we know nothing about or some freaky hoodoo, it operates on basic principles. It needs its power source to keep moving. And, if I’ve got this right, that power source is based around your little friend Maria. Take her out, and the game’s up for John Reed.”

  Gideon shook his head vehemently. “No. We’re not going to hurt Maria.”

  “She ain’t even alive. You’re balancing her against . . . how many people in London? Six million? Rule number three. Weigh up the odds, and don’t bet on a pair if the other guy’s got a royal flush. Now, what kind of weaponry is that dragon packing?”

  “I don’t know. Reed talked of raining fire on London. I don’t know if he was being literal or metaphorical.”

  “I’m a dab hand with the three-pounder Hotchkiss, as we’ve already effing seen,” said Bent.

  “Not with that arm,” said Cockayne. “Look, I’m going to the bridge, check our bearing. You guys . . . you’ve been through the mill. You look beat. Why don’t you take a couple of hours of sleep? I’ll wake you up when we see the white cliffs of Dover.”

  Gideon headed for the cabin and lay on the bunk, staring at the ceiling and listening to the steady thrum of the engines. He had no idea what he was going to do if they eventually caught up with the Apep dragon. Harpoons and guns . . . were they going to be enough? And what kind of damage could John Reed inflict before they managed to stop him?

  The responsibility weighed suffocatingly on Gideon, but he knew there was no one else to shoulder it. Bent was well meaning but injured. Cockayne had refused to engage. Bathory was still weakened, and she had no loyalties to Britain. Her mission of revenge was fulfilled, the last of the Children of Heqet buried under the collapsed pyramid of Rhodopis. Rowena would do what she could, he knew, but by the same token her loyalties were really to herself. And Trigger . . . the lifeless look in his eyes told Gideon that Trigger considered himself dead already.

  It was up to him. He closed his eyes and willed sleep to come, knowing that when it did he would inevitably dream of dragons again.

  31

  Apep

  Maria could not remember a time when she was not Apep, and Apep was not her. She felt every beat of the—of her— wings, knew instinctively how to steer with her tail and how to lean into the wind by flexing the pistons and gears in her powerful hind legs. Memories of ancient sand and heat mingled with her more recent recollections and ultimately subsumed them.

  Every nerve and thought entangled with what she had become. She had a purpose. She had instructions, a map, in her head. Testing out her new body, her new being, she swooped low over the sand and then high into the blue sky, twisting the brass beast in a balletic turn, then straightening and flying on.

  “I am Apep,” she said in a tongue at once utterly foreign to her and completely natural. “I am the destroyer.” She paused. “I am at the command of one man alone.” She looked away from the blue sky that met the yellow sand ahead of them. “Are you Amasis?”

  “Yes,” said John Reed. “I am your
Amasis. You were created to wage war on an empire that threatened to swamp the world.”

  She paused again, considering, allowing the ancient programming to settle and calm within her. She nodded. “What are your orders, Amasis?”

  He shrugged and smiled. “As they always were. To wage war on the Empire. To London.”

  On John Reed’s instructions to Maria, who was changed in ways he could only guess at, Apep flew high and fast, keeping to the clouds where possible and following the line of Italy’s western coastline. In Rome, Reed, knew, the people would be pausing at their coffees and looking up as the shadow of the gigantic beast fell over the Immortal City, and in Livorno he saw how they fled for cover in the churches. Reed had commanded Maria to set a course for London, and she had instinctively and unerringly done so, her eyes wide as she sat ramrod stiff in the reclining leather seat, the artifact in her head feeding to each cog, flywheel, and pinion that powered and moved Apep, each piston and hydraulic pump, each tiny combustion chamber and grinding gearwheel.

  Reed, the Golden Apple of Shangri-La in his hand, had her soar over the glistening blue sea. In Marseille, French cannons fired hopelessly at Apep, and horses stampeded in fright on the Camargue. Partisans took pot shots, and Reed knew by now word would have gotten to British Gibraltar. They’d be telegraphing the headquarters of the Fleet Air Arm. Yeovilton wouldn’t quite know what to make of it all, he thought, but when panicked reports began to come in from France and Spain that something strange was in the air and headed for Britain, they would think it prudent to do something, at least. He was right. He peered through his spyglass at the three RS-3s, the lightest and most maneuverable of the Crown’s military dirigibles, taking up a holding pattern just over the cliffs of Dover.

  Apep flew out of the sun on its huge pumping wings. Reed felt bold and ordered Maria to push Apep forward into a steep dive, then pull out of it at the last minute, just to make sure everyone got a damned good look at them. The two flanking RS-3s moved into a defensive position and trained their twopound guns on Apep, presumably waiting for the order to be flashed up to them via heliograph from below. As Apep bore down on them, the message came, and Reed, with his long years of military service, decoded the series of sunbursts in his head almost without trying:

  Fire at will.

  Both RS-3s let loose their shells, which bounced harmlessly off Apep’s hide. The central ’stat was loading up its guns when Apep responded.

  “Maria,” Reed said. “Attack.”

  She stiffened again, and her hands played over the glowing instrument panel in front of her. Reed felt a grinding of gears from below, and the sensation that something was opening.

  There was a moment’s silence, in which the pride of the Empire’s mastery of the air faced off against the ancient technology long buried beneath the shifting sands of Egypt.

  Apep roared.

  A burning ball of gas issued from Apep’s now gaping maw, a blue and orange and yellow comet that slammed into the central RS-3 and engulfed it in a conflagration that quickly overwhelmed the fragile balloon and incinerated the small wooden gondola, leaving only a rain of ashes to fall on the stunned soldiers below.

  Reed, his blood surging, saw the heliograph message from the ground ordering the remaining two RS-3s to engage, but before they could load their shells they too felt the fierce heat of Apep’s roar, and were disintegrated.

  In the Yellow Rose they watched in silence from the bridge. “Well,” said Bent. “First blood to John Reed.”

  Bathory looked sharply at him. “He has already claimed first blood. Bram.”

  Bent frowned at her. “Are you well, Countess? You look awfully pale.”

  She waved him away, though her brow furrowed with evident pain.

  Cockayne chewed his cigarillo. “So the dragon really does breathe fire. Well, at least we know what we’re dealing with now.” He looked at Gideon. “Rule number four. Know your enemy.”

  “Can we outrun it?” asked Gideon. “Beat them to London?”

  Cockayne shook his head. “I don’t know what juice that thing is running on, but it beats the hell out of what we’re packing.”

  Cockayne boosted the propellers as Apep cast its shadow across the patchwork countryside of England. Without looking at Gideon he asked, “You got a plan yet?”

  “I’m working on it,” said Gideon through gritted teeth. “You just concentrate on keeping up with them.”

  Cockayne gave him an amused look and winked at Fanshawe. “Aye aye, captain.”

  Near Biggin Hill a fleet of five beefy Albert-class ’stats, bristling with firepower and the best maneuverability the Fleet Air Arm could boast, blockaded the sky in their famous “five of clubs” formation, while a crowd of cheering civilians gathered below, waving Union flags.

  “No one knows what we are,” said Reed. “All they know is that we are a threat. But this empire has grown so corpulent, so arrogant, that it does not fear threats anymore. It merely expects they shall fail.”

  The Fleet Air Arm enjoyed moderate success that surprised Reed. The first volley of bullets managed to shatter one of the glass “eye” windows of Apep, to a suddenly audible rousing cheer from the crowd below. But Apep’s retaliation was swift and terrible. With five well-aimed fireballs, Apep sent each of the Albert-class ’stats hurtling in flames to the fields, the last plunging into the crowd of fleeing onlookers. A pall of smoke and a terrible silence hung over Biggin Hill, and a satisfied Reed had Apep move on.

  “At last,” said Reed, looking out over Bexleyheath at the line of carts and people flowing northwest along the Watling Street Road, to what they must have believed was the relative safety of London Town. “Word of our presence precedes us.”

  As Apep scooted low along the wide avenue, Reed experimented with a series of short bursts of fireballs, laying a sustained carpet of flame that took hold of the ancient wooden houses to either side and roasted the fleeing refugees where they stood. Reed had Maria turn a victory roll and swiftly ascend high into the sky, as the charnel stench of blackened flesh rose in a hellish cloud from burning Bexleyheath below.

  In the Yellow Rose, Gideon hung his head as they passed the slaughter in the blazing streets. Cockayne had given the ’stat all the power he could muster, and with a following wind they had finally made up the time in pursuit of the dragon. Gideon almost wished they hadn’t. Too late to halt the destruction, but in time to witness the aftermath of the carnage. The wreckage of the Albert-class ’stats had been bad enough, especially the one that had hurtled into the hill and claimed the lives of the cheering crowd. But the deliberate murders of the unfortunates fleeing Apep’s arrival . . . that was almost too much to bear witness to.

  “I could have stopped this,” said Gideon, quiet and fierce. “I should never have taken Maria into the pyramid.”

  Seething, he grabbed a horrified Trigger by the front of his shirt. “How many are dead down there, Trigger? Reed can’t be allowed to get away with this. You’ve got to do something.”

  “No,” mumbled Trigger, refusing to meet Gideon’s stare. “No. You are right. John is gone from me. He might as well be dead already.” Finally, Trigger looked up at Gideon. There were tears in the old man’s eyes. “As might I.”

  Disgusted, Gideon pushed him away. To Cockayne he said, “Give her all you’ve got. We need to catch Apep, before there is more slaughter.”

  “You got a plan at last?”

  Gideon grimly said again, “I’m working on it.”

  The wind whistled in through the window, caressing Reed’s face. “Ah, London,” he said. “How I have missed you. How you will beg for mercy.”

  Maria watched impassively from the pilot seat. She said, “Is this the empire that threatens the world? I see no ranks of soldiers. No armies. I see only . . . innocents.”

  “There are no innocents in London, Maria. Every man, woman, and child is complicit in the crimes of the British Empire; they are all cogs that move forward the inexorable machine that
crushes the human spirit, subsumes it into the single entity that is Britannia. Victoria will not rest until she has remade the entire world in her image, until there are no corners of any foreign fields that are not forever England.”

  He leaned forward to peer through the windows. “Ah. Greenwich approaches. Look, Maria, the Lady of Liberty flood barrier! Shall we show them what we think of their liberty, their freedom to do whatever they like, so long as the Crown approves? Take off its head, Maria.”

  Her hands hovered above the instrument panel, but she hesitated. Reed laughed. “You cannot deny me, Maria. You are merely a passenger in your own body. Apep is the dominant force. Obey me!”

  She banked Apep sharply, and it circled the tall verdigris- covered statue flanking the Thames, its feet mired in the mud of the river, ready to hold hard against sudden rushes of water from upstream. When Reed was sure he had enough of an audience below, he ordered her to let loose Apep’s dragon roar. The impassive face of Lady Liberty blackened and began to melt, then the head toppled from the shoulders of the huge metal statue and crashed into the river.

  “Now for the climax!” cried Reed. “Let us strike the Empire at its very heart. Maria, to Buckingham Palace!”

  “The Empire does not appear to be beaten yet,” observed Maria, reporting a flotilla of dirigibles converging on the city, gunships of all sizes from the Fleet Air Arm’s bases, every ’stat the Crown could muster. It was as though she saw across the city with Apep’s vast glass eyes, as though she were plugged into not just the dragon’s workings but a greater network of chattering telephone calls and telegraphic communications. He watched those on London’s packed streets seek out the parks for sanctuary, and space to move should more conflagration fall from the sky. Apep banked and wheeled above Hyde Park, performing yet smoother and more daring feats of aerobatics as Maria settled into her control of the great brass dragon.