Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution

by Ann Vandermeer (ed)

  Clarita gave the door a final kick, then stepped back. “Fine. I’m coming back with a Çelebi.” While standing in place she began to stomp her feet, gradually decreasing the force of her steps to mimic the sound of receding footsteps. With her right hand, she took a brass ruler from her sidebag and stopped moving. She waited crouched before the door. One…two…

  The door opened just a crack, and a suspicious eye peered out at the corridor. Before the door could slam shut Clarita lunged forward and wedged the ruler in the gap.

  “Ha!” Clarita shouted, using the ruler as a lever to pry open the door. Defeated, the boy stepped back and crossed his arms, glaring at Clarita as she entered his room.

  Clarita tapped the tip of the ruler against her forehead, flushed with pleasure at her success. “You’ve got a lot to learn before you can best me.”

  “My apologies,” Domingo said, his jaw jutting out like the bow of a galleon. “I forget how good you Spaniards are at invading the homes of others.”

  And that was the reason that Clarita and Domingo could never be friends. It wasn’t the fact that Clarita was the best student in the Fleet, or that the Çelebi had turned her into Domingo’s personal overseer and tutor. No, it was the simple fact that Domingo was a Filipino, and Clarita was “Spanish”— never mind that she had never seen Spain, or that her father was French, or that her mother came from a Muslim minority that was more persecuted in Spain than Domingo’s people were in Luzon. It was obvious to Clarita that as far as Domingo was concerned, she was The Enemy. Considering that many of her fantasies involved using the Tagalog as a test subject for one of Nur’s more unstable inventions, maybe he was right.

  Clarita let her eyes roam around Domingo’s room. It was the first time she’d ever been inside, and, except for canvas sacks piled in the corner, the small space looked surprisingly clean.

  “You’ve been here three months now, and you still haven’t unpacked?”

  “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.” Domingo took a step back as she moved forward, eyes flicking away, then back at her.

  “And I don’t see how my question is a call for rudeness,” she snapped.

  “Rudeness?” Domingo laughed. “You’re a Spaniard. That’s a wrong which calls for a wrong. Why are you even here? I don’t have falsafa scheduled today.”

  “Would it even matter to you if you did?” She pointed a finger at the younger boy. “You haven’t met with any of the Çelebi for a week—and I know that Çelebi Jalal was supposed to see you yesterday, so don’t even try to lie.”

  Clarita heard some of her anger creeping into her voice. She couldn’t help it. Here he was, with access to a level of instruction that was the envy of the world, and he seemed dead set on squandering it. Why the Çelebi had granted Domingo admission was a mystery to Clarita, but less so than the fact that they seemed so invested in his academic advancement. If I missed two falsafa in a row, Clarita though bitterly, they’d have me on a ship to Jolo within the day, best student or no. The thought of having to leave the Fleet and face her father under such a circumstance, even imagined, stoked the fires of her anger even higher.

  “And if I’m not interested in making graceless, clanking machines, what is it to you?” Domingo waved a hand at her; dismissive, imperious. “Get out of my room, moro. You have no right to be here.”

  Clarita’s eyes narrowed. “Funny, I was thinking the same thing. Since you hate it here so much, I think you should just leave.” With a burst of speed, she brushed past him. “In fact, why don’t I help you pack?”

  “Don’t touch those!” Domingo caught Clarita’s arm, but even as he pulled her back, Clarita kicked out at one of the bags. As soon as her toes hit the canvas, a cloud of sawdust and wood chips erupted from the bag.

  Clarita coughed, and took a step back, waving the dust away from her face. Domingo moved quickly to pick up the bag, but by then she had already glimpsed the rest of its contents.

  “Is that…what you’ve been doing in here, all this time?”

  Domingo lurched away, holding the bag she’d kicked, but Clarita merely reached down and picked up another. She thrust her hand inside, and pulled out a wooden figure, about half a cubit in length.

  “It isn’t…it isn’t what you think it is,” Domingo said, his voice tremulous, but Clarita was too entranced by the carving to pay him any mind. It was only half finished, but it was clearly meant to be a middle-aged woman. Clarita marveled at the level of detail that had been painstakingly etched in the wood, from the embroidery along the sleeves of the woman’s blouse, to the fine lines at the corners of her eyes, lines that somehow conveyed the certainty that they had been stamped by suffering, rather than time.

  Clarita looked back up at Domingo, who seemed ready to make a break for the door. “Did you make this?”

  The boy licked his lips, then seemed to recover some semblance of the belligerence with which he usually addressed her. “Yes. And again, I don’t know why that’s any of your—”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “—your, uhm…” He stopped. “Wait, you’re not angry?”

  “Angry? Why would I be…Allah give patience to my soul,” Clarita threw up her hands. “Did you think I’d take this as blasphemy? Is that what they teach you Christians?”

  “I wasn’t sure,” he said, his voice cautious. “I don’t know a lot about you people.”

  “That’s because you’ve gone out of your way to keep from getting to know us, kafir. As long as you’re not planning on praying to this thing, we’ll have no problems.”

  Clarita watched as the anxiety leaked from the boy, leaving him with an almost comical look of relief. “Thank God. If I had to tell Father I’d been expelled…”

  Clarita felt a twinge of sympathy. Who would have thought she’d have something in common with the Christian boy? She looked at the figure again. And who’d have thought he’ d actually be good at something. As she let her fingers follow the contours of the shaped wood, felt the weight of it in her hand, an idea sparked in the recesses of her mind. She handed the carving of the woman back to Domingo, then placed a friendly hand on his shoulder.

  “Listen, promise me that you’ll be at falsafa tomorrow so that the Çelebi will get off both our backs,” she said, “and in return, I’ll give you a reason to keep going.”

  When Clarita pushed open the door to the workshop, Domingo’s nose wrinkled immediately. “What is that smell?”

  “Some concoction the alchemists came up with to keep us from burning down the ship,” Clarita sniffed. It had been some time since she’d last noticed the pungent aroma. “You’ll get used to it. Watch your head.”

  Clarita ducked beneath a series of pipes that seemed to have been positioned intentionally for maximum mischief. A muffled thunk later, Domingo emerged on the other side, rubbing his forehead and wearing a sour expression—but that changed as soon as he got his first good look at the workshop.

  When the first Çelebi had allied themselves with Sultan Qudarat over a hundred years ago, the Fleet had consisted of nothing but two ragged vessels, barely able to stay afloat. Now, the Fleet numbered nine self-propelling Khaliya Safin—and numerous smaller craft for defense and trade—each of which was dedicated to one of the major branches of learning. The Jazari was home to machinists like Clarita who studied the mechanical arts, and while she had grown used to the place over the last two years, she still remembered how it had felt like when she first found herself amidst the hissing, clanging, smoldering chaos of the student workshop.

  The Jazari was one of the most populated ships, and at any given time there could be a dozen students and twenty different projects jostling for space within the high-ceilinged room. As a result, the students learned to build around each other, their inventions and experimental apparatus entwined like tree limbs in a rainforest of hard brass and shorn wood, piles of books and loose pages serving as the underbrush.

  “Watch out!” came the call of a familiar voice, and Clari
ta pulled Domingo to the ground just as a large object hurtled past them, to shatter against the wall in a spray of water and ceramic.

  Clarita straightened her kombong. “Water pressure still giving you problems?” she asked the lanky girl who had just popped out from behind a particularly sturdy worktable.

  “I think I’m putting too many contortions in the pipe.” Like Clarita, she too wore a kombong around her head, and tight, black sawal pants beneath a loose, long-sleeved blouse with embroidered geometric designs. The taller girl, however, had a blade sheathed at her hip, an auto-kris which Clarita had once seen cut through an inch of iron. “Is this your Tagalog? He looks a bit fragile.”

  Clarita made a face. “Domingo Malong, meet Nur bint Jamal Hassim al Maguindanao.”

  “Just Nur,” Nur said as she offered her hand to Domingo. The boy took it, though his eyes were a bit wild.

  “Was that some kind of weapon?” Domingo asked.

  The taller girl snorted. “If I built a weapon that couldn’t pierce a reinforced hull, I’d slit my throat.”

  “Nur’s from the Rammah,” said Clarita, referring to the home ship of the War Makers, “but she’s working on a project for Çelebi Samira, on the side. Penance for almost sinking the Jazari a few months back.”

  “It wouldn’t have sunk,” said Nur, in a long-suffering tone of voice. “Maybe it would have listed a little, but no one was in any real danger.”

  “So then what—”

  “It’s an odorless privy,” Nur said, then at Domingo’s blank look: “You Tagalogs would call it an arinola.”

  Clarita laughed at Domingo’s expression. “Çelebi Samira is a woman of acute sensibilities…and little patience. We’d best let Nur get back to work.”

  “Good to meet you Tagalog,” Nur said. “Nice of you to help Clarita with her research.”

  “Research?” Domingo asked, casting a suspicious look toward Clarita as she led him further into the maze of metal struts and stained cabinets. “What research?”

  Clarita cursed under her breath. “Later. I promised to show you something first.”

  She stopped in front of her own modest worktable, most of it occupied by her latest project, hidden from view by a specially treated tarpaulin. Clarita ducked down beneath the table, and after a few minutes of rummaging, she emerged with a dusty wooden box, about twice the size of a loaf of bread. She opened the box and smiled at Domingo’s sharp intake of breath as he saw the wooden figures inside. Clarita set the box on the table, then began to remove them one by one, a lute player, a knight, and a princess, each one exquisitely detailed and small enough to fit in her hand.

  “Did you—?”

  Clarita shook her head. “My father used to work with a man named Jacques de Vaucanson. When Father left Europe, de Vaucanson gave them to him as a parting gift.”

  Domingo was barely listening. His eyes traced over every line of the figures as if to carve them indelibly into his memory. And she hadn’t even delivered the coup de grâce yet.

  She gently inserted a small key into the back of the princess and twisted. Immediately the figure began to bow, stopping when it reached mid-waist, then straightening again, repeating the somewhat rickety motion while Clarita keyed the other figures into action, the knight lifting and lowering its sword, the musician moving the lute back and forth.

  “I thought you might find these more impressive than a cord pulley or a pump engine,” Clarita said, her tone smug, but she could see from the rapture in his eyes that she’d already won. There was something about his expression of absolute stupefaction that gave her a warm feeling.

  “See? Not every machine needs to be graceless and noisy.” She clapped him on the shoulder. “Just think of these beauties every time Çelebi Jalal is rambling on about valves and sprockets—it may not seem like it, but you can use mechanics to build art, if you’re good enough.”

  Domingo tore his eyes away from the clockwork pieces, his face oddly conflicted. “I’m not here to learn about art,” he said, but his next words betrayed him. “Could I borrow them?”

  Clarita smiled. Got you. “I don’t know, kafir, these are priceless family heir-looms we’re talking about…I’d be foolish to just loan them out for nothing.”

  Domingo gave her a sour look. “You’re as subtle as a flying arinola. I suppose this is where that research comes in?”

  Clarita’s smile grew wider. With a flourish, she pulled the tarpaulin off her table, to reveal a pair of folded mechanical wings, attached to a complicated apparatus of wood and brass, cogs and levers, roughly in the shape of a throne that had been cut off at the armrests, dangling from an iron stand by leather straps.

  “This,” Clarita said with pride, “is the Auto-bird, my prototype human-operated, heavier-than-air flying harness.”

  “What does it do?” Domingo asked in a dry tone, then grinned as Clarita sputtered in indignation. “Look, it’s impressive, but if you’re having trouble getting it off the ground, I can’t help. I’m no machinist.”

  “No,” Clarita grinned. “But you have another skill I’d like to borrow.”

  “Move your head a little bit to the left.”

  Clarita let out a breath. “You’ve been working on my nose for more than a week.”

  In response, Domingo set down his chisel, this one with a v-shaped head (she was beginning to wonder how many he owned), and stared at her with supreme patience. Clarita sighed, then turned her face to the left. Behind him, the door stood open, a compromise for the sake of her modesty as Domingo refused to carve anywhere else. As she heard the methodical sound of metal biting into wood, she tried to distract herself by letting her eyes wander around Domingo’s room. It was poor entertainment, considering that she’d long since memorized even the grain patterns of the floorboards.

  It had been a simple enough plan: have Domingo craft a wooden model of her so that she could safely test her flight harness. The Auto-bird was her masterpiece, something that would guarantee her the rank of Çelebi if demonstrated at a Promotion Trial. The masters of the Fleet held a special weakness for those who could master the winds and seize the legacy of their spiritual founder, Ahmet Çelebi. Clarita believed that she’d created a mechanical harness capable of wing-assisted flight, but she wasn’t crazy enough to attempt a test flight herself. The only way she was going to get any useful results would be if she could approximate how the harness would react with her strapped into it, and that meant creating an accurate model, or, in this case, finding someone to create it for her.

  A sound plan. She just hadn’t expected that it would take months.

  It wasn’t that Clarita didn’t appreciate the effort that Domingo was putting into the project. After all—except for that hellish week where she had to pose with her arms suspended, resting on an imaginary brace—she just stood still (or sat) while Domingo hammered, chiseled, and cut. But the Auto-bird was almost ready for a field test and Clarita was getting impatient. The next docking at Jolo was less than half a year away.

  Clarita stood up, and Domingo made a small, exasperated noise. “Clarita…”

  “Dom, listen, I don’t need something that can take my place in falsafa. I can’t afford to waste too much time on—”

  “Waste?” Domingo asked, in an injured tone. He laid down his chisel and picked up a hammer.

  “I didn’t mean that,” Clarita said, picking her words carefully. While Domingo had, surprisingly, turned out to be good company, she’d learned the hard way that he was vindictive and easily offended. “The model is fine, it’s good enough—”

  “Good enough?”

  The hammer hit the wood with unusual force, and Clarita jumped back, unnerved by how loud the harsh cracking sound was in the small space.

  “What does that even mean? You’re going to be hundreds of feet in the air!” Domingo was glaring at her as if he found the thought of her leaving the ground to be personally insulting. “What if something goes wrong? What if you turn the wrong way or pull the wron
g lever because, because when you did your test I got your hip wrong, or your elbow, or, or your nose?”

  Clarita was ready to answer his rising anger with her own, but there was something in his voice, in the strain on his face, that gave the girl pause. She smiled.

  “Domingo Malong…are you worried about me? Little moro me?”

  To her great delight, Domingo actually blushed, looking quickly down and busying himself with carving a notch between the fingers of the model. “Don’t be ridiculous. I just…I think it’s crazy what you’re doing. You’re taking a huge risk, and for what?”

  Clarita sat back down, and for a few minutes there were no sounds other than those Domingo’s tools made as they steadily chipped away at the wood.

  “I made a promise.” The words were out before she realized that she had decided to confide in him. “A deal…with my father. If I’m promoted to Çelebi by my next homecoming, then I get to stay on the Fleet for good.”

  “That sounds like an easy enough deadline to avoid.”

  Clarita barked out a harsh laugh. “I come from Jolo. The Fleet docks there at least twice a year. At the worst case, I’ve only got six months.”

  For a long moment, Domingo was quiet. “A Çelebi at fifteen, huh?”

  Clarita felt heat rush to her face. Most students studied for more than a decade before they passed their Promotion Trials, the demonstrations of learning and ingenuity required before one was allowed to teach at the Fleet. Without another word, she rose once more to her feet and headed toward the doorway. Domingo intercepted her, his hand encircling her wrist.

  “You’re the smartest student I’ve met here. If anyone can do it, you can.” His eyes were earnest and searching, and Clarita felt like one of the Vaucanson figures which had so captured his imagination. “And whatever I can do to help, I will.”

  Maybe Clarita’s surprise showed on her face, or maybe the boy hadn’t really meant to be so direct, but Domingo let go of her wrist abruptly and turned away. “I’ll…see you tomorrow.”

  Clarita stepped out into the hallway, then turned and smiled at the back of Domingo’s head. The boy had begun to clean the chips and wood shavings from the floor, and was studiously avoiding any glances in her direction.