Got you.
The angle at which my head was resting had caused the slotted spoon in my hat to slide right out, nearly lost forever. I smirked and held it between finger and thumb. The reflection of my face was stretched across the piece, dotted by its many holes. Lucky catch, I thought.
Lucky. I nearly scoffed at the word, for it was one I could no longer trust. Moments of fortune between hours of mischief. Granted, I felt very fortunate that I hadn't yet managed to land a bullet in my back throughout this mad series of escapades, but I was far from hopeful. I eyed the slotted spoon. Suppose I hadn't caught it, or even better, suppose I’d purposely dropped it. Just flicked it over the edge of the ship. What luck would befall that? Would chance have it land in some pile of dirt, never to be seen again? Would it land at just the right angle to pierce some poor slob's skull, adding the offense of murder to the list of charges against me? Would it fall in the palm of some brilliant, British super-sleuth, who would instantly deduce from where it came and who had pitched it, thus quickly resulting in my capture?
Or would it only result in a marginally lighter hat? Hmph. Most likely. I felt the pull of the hanging bottle, its strap digging into my shoulder. Maybe I could stand to rid myself of a little baggage. I slipped the strap off and propped the bottle onto the railing. With an index finger on the cork, I tilted it forward, watching the contained green swill start to slide to the falling end.
“What are you doing?” Dolly said to me.
I blinked and clasped the bottle in my hand. “Just fooling around.” I returned the spoon to my hat.
“You were going to toss it,” the Watchmaker's Doll said, angry and pouting.
“Eh, not necessari—“
“Mister Pocket.”
“All right. Suppose I was. What of it?”
“That would be very stupid!”
“Sorry,” I said, not particularly meaning it.
She rolled her mechanical eyes. “Do you even know why that would be very stupid?”
“Sure,” I said dully. “Could land on somebody. Strike 'em dead. You know, one time, Kitt had these marbles—“
“It would be stupid,” she informed me, “because it is your essence.”
I shrugged.
“Don't shrug!” she protested. “Wouldn't you care if you lost a part of yourself?”
“It's a pretty heavy part of myself. Maybe I get tired of dragging it.”
“But—“
“It's just a bottle of something. Probably mucky water. It's not magic.”
“But...like the story goes...it's you...”
“Then I'm a batch of nasty muck. Lovely thought, that. Will Pocket, adding up to a pitcher of dirty water, the only benefit of which is that from the right distance, from the right pair of eyes, it can be mistaken for something more interesting, something...grander...”
The Doll frowned, took my bottle, and hugged it. I sighed and crossed my arms.
“Maybe that isn't so far off, Dolly. Maybe I'm just something that looks good from a distance. Like seeing a piece of shiny garbage and mistaking it for a lost coin. I mean, look at me. Running from the King like some grand, romantic criminal. All over a petty misunderstanding gone way too far.”
The sweet taste in the air fell away. The Doll made a childish sound and pushed the bottle to my stomach.
“Hmph! Shiny garbage,” she said. “If you believe that, then you are truly the stupidest man who ever lived!”
She crossed her arms to mock me and turned her eyes away. I watched her intentionally view the clouds instead of me. I couldn't help but half-smile. Quietly, I put the bottle and strap in its normal place over my shoulder, and joined her in cloud-gazing. Neither of us heard the lady sailor join us.“You like?” B said with a confident smile, leaning an elbow over the rail.
I blinked. “Do we…like…”
“The ship,” she said.
“Oh. Yes. Very impressive. Can’t say I’ve seen another like it.”
B laughed. “Not surprised. They don’t come out of the shops looking like this.”
“I believe you. Seems to be a good bit of custom modification.”
“Well, when you travel with a pack of steam-pressed wrench jockeys like I do, you see a lot of it. Dying for any chance to play with machines. Jack calls himself and the Captain ‘new world cannibals,’ but they’re really just little boys messing around with things they shouldn’t. One day they’re going to blow us all up. And if they do, they better pray the explosion kills me.”
“Mmm...” I muttered. I decided to stay away from that line of conversation and instead flicked my fingers against a piece of brass. “It certainly is all dolled up,” I commented, and then, thinking upon my choice of words, tossed a smile and a shrug to the clockwork girl beside me as an apology.
“It’s pretty,” Dolly said.
“Pretty and powerful,” B grinned. “Nothing like being blown out of the sky by a shiny, golden death machine.”
“A pretty death is still death.”
Thrown off our guard by the Doll’s sudden shift to the morose, the lady sailor and I dropped our eyes and looked out to the sky.
“Sorry,” the Doll added. “Didn’t mean to bring the gloom.”
B smirked. “Well, aren’t you just a little rain cloud?”
“I like rain clouds,” I interjected. “Touch of grey in the sky, a little dark. Makes a nice contrast in the colors.”
I winked at the Doll, changing her guilty frown into a cautious smile.
“Colors in the sky,” B said. “Heh. That’s right. You’re the storyteller, aren’t you, tower?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“So what would you say about a giant golden death machine?”
“Well,” I said, stretching my back between the two women, “I’d always be honored to die before something beautiful.”
The Doll played with her gloves and chewed a little on her synthetic lip.
“Hey!” Gren suddenly yelled, appearing at the other side of the deck. “Pocket!”
“What?” I called back.
“Come over here. I need your help.”
“With what?”
“With your hands.”
“Not what I meant.”
“Just come here!”
“Fine.” I clucked my tongue. “Excuse me, ladies.”
I was soon in front of a pair thick iron doors, full of rivets and clashing with the rest of the ship's color and design. They were clenched shut, smashed into each other. Gren's fingers gripped them at the meeting line, attempted to pull them apart, and turned pink. He then hurt his hand punching them.
“That'll show them,” I said.
“Will you just help me?” he responded, rubbing his knuckles.
“Sure,” I said with a great exhale. “How?”
“These stupid doors get stuck sometime. Help me pry 'em apart.”
“Sure,” I repeated. “How?”
“There's a pair of hand wheels you can spin. Manually open the damn things when the electrical controls trip up. Take that one on the right.”
“All right.”
Me and Gren leaned our weight into the matching hand wheels that stood on each side of the doors, slowly pulling them open. I won't lie. I thought my arms were going to fall off.
“Too heavy for ya?” Gren muttered, a vein appearing on his forehead.
“Not at all,” I lied, sucking in air.
At last they were open and we both nearly collapsed in exhaustion. Gren and I caught each other panting on the floor and we started laughing.
“Not exactly musclemen, are we?” Gren joked.
“Not exactly,” I admitted. “It's a shame Eddie's not around. We could use a little strength.”
“Eddie would die of boredom here. Sitting around for hours in the sky, waiting to land.”
“Would probably start spitting over the railing.”
“Yeah. Probably.” Gren stood and cracked his neck. “Anyway, doors are open. Than
ks for the assistance.”
“No prob. I was...was...” My words trailed off, and I stood transfixed at what stood behind the heavy iron doors. My jaw dropped.
“What?” Gren said. “Never seen one of these before?”
“Is that what I think it is?” Kitt said, surprising us both by appearing from the corner.
“Gah!” Gren said, startled. “Don't do that.”
“Yeah,” Kitt said. “But is that—“
“Yes, it is. Don't get all excited.”
“I wasn't.”
“What is it?” Dolly asked, walking over with B.
“The mechanical future,” Gren said with a snort. “Or some hogwash like that. For people too lazy to lift their legs up and down a damn pair of stairs.”
“So it's...” Dolly wondered.
“Yes,” B said, jumping to the point. “It's a lift.”
“You're joking.”
“Alan, really?”
“Sigh...you're not joking.”
“Of course not.”
“But Pocket. You didn't get on the damn thing, did you?”
“Alan...”
“Right. Of course you did.”
I instinctively gripped the railing that circled the middle of the cast-iron pod. The lift slid downward with perpetual bops and jerks, pinballing us about to the hum of its electric song.
“First time in a lift?” Gren asked with a grin.
“Yeah,” I said. I was beginning to regret the decision. Gren had quickly offered us the opportunity to ride along, as he was heading down to the bowels of the ship.
“Fastest way down,” he had said, flashing a cocky grin at, I imagine, the realization that he had experienced something in this world that we had not. B declined, claiming to have better things to do than poke around the boiler room for Jack, but Dolly, Kitt, and I were curious enough to come. So we squeezed into the box and began our decent.
I held my footing, looking at the words stamped into the domed lid of our pod.
NEW LONDON HYDRAULIC COMPANY – 1885
“I didn’t know they put these on ships,” Kitt said.
“They don’t,” Gren said.
Kitt seemed ready with a follow-up question but the lift jerked again.
“Do not like!” Dolly fussed to Gren.
“Agreed,” I said, dizzy. “What the hell, Gren? The adverts say these electric models run fairly smooth.”
“Pfff…what do they know?” Gren scoffed. “They’d say anything to sell you—“
Another rough shake. Gren smacked his plated back against the side, and the metal against metal rang out in a harmonic hum.
“All right, a little bumpy,” he grumbled. “But what do you expect from a custom job?”
“Custom?” Dolly asked. “What do you mean?”
“Like I said, they don’t stick these in ships. The captain acquired this and hardwired it in himself. Well, him and Jack. They toy around with stuff like this. Tinkerers.”
“I wish they would’ve tinkered a little harder,” Kitt said.
“Hey, this isn’t bad, considering,” Gren argued. “We’re in the air, flying all around. We’re lucky it doesn’t drop us down the shaft like a stone.”
“An optimist,” I muttered.
“And, uh, is that a possibility?” Kitt asked.
“Just shut up and hold onto the railing. That’s why it’s there.”
The lift bumped its way to the belly of the ship and we were finally granted our freedom from the would-be falling tomb. The iron doors opened and we stepped into the boiler room of the steamship Lucidia.
“Oh my…” the Doll said. “This…is their steam boiler?”
The ‘this’ that Dolly was so sourly addressing was a swollen, round canister welded upright into the floor, tall as the room and wearing a charming coat of slime upon its coat of rust upon what I could only assume, hope, and pray was a thick, sturdy body of black iron. It was altogether…
“Foul,” the Doll commented.
Yes, foul. Very much so.
As for the rest of the room, it seemed almost to have been designed similarly in a style of…well, let’s imagine for a moment that a machine could vomit. It would be about like that in appearance, texture, and aroma, with the rusty boiler serving as a sort of centerpiece, bringing the whole look together, or rather, horribly apart.
“Cozy,” I said flatly to Gren.
“I know I just complained about the lift,” Kitt remarked. “But I think I should point out a complaint I have about this boiler as well.”
“Great,” Gren sneered.
Not to be deterred, Kitt soldiered on with his inquisition.
“Steam power is essentially boiling water, right?”
“Essentially…yeah…why?”
“How do you get a place this filthy with boiling water? I thought…well, you’ve seen the adverts. A clean fuel for a clean age, right?”
“Didn’t I just tell you not to trust everything you read? The truth’s a little uglier sometimes.”
“A little?” I interposed, watching the walls sweat grease.
“Look, Kitt,” Gren explained. “Yeah, it’s clean. But just because it ends clean, doesn’t mean it starts clean, right?”
“I don’t know,” Kitt replied.
“How do you boil water?”
“Heat?”
“Right. And how do you make heat?”
“Fire?”
“Right. And how do you make fire? You burn things. That’s what kicks the whole thing off, combustibles. Anything that burns goes to the pot.”
“Wait,” Dolly said. “You mean they’re burning anything? For fuel?”
“Anything that’ll catch fire and they don’t need. Easier that way. Don’t have to go hunting for wood or coal or whatever. Cheaper too. Of course, some things burn a little nicer than others. Some stuff…ug…really smells and slops a bit.”
“That explains the stink,” I said. “But not the grease and rust.”
“Oh, Jack’s just a slob.”
“You could’ve just told us that.”
“Shut up, Pocket.”
Gren marched around the long, dimly-lit space, searching the shadows for his friend.
“Damn it,” he muttered. “Where the hell is he?” He shuffled around some bent tools and industrial scraps with his feet and looked around the mess.
“Maybe…we should wait upstairs,” Kitt said, slowly sliding back toward the lift.
“No, no,” Gren said, poking around. “The dolt’s around here somewhere. Jack! It’s me! I swear, he’ll—“
An ear-splitting crack sounded off in our ears as a dingy explosion popped in the distance. A faint shouting soon followed.
“Damn!” yelled the voice. “That stings!”
“Okay,” Gren said to us. “There he is. Hang on.”
Kitt took another step toward the lift. This time Dolly joined him.
“Jack!” Gren yelled to the darkness.
“What?” the darkness yelled to Gren.
“Come out here!”
“What?”
“Come out here!”
“Who is it?”
“It’s me!”
“You who?”
“It’s Gren Spader!” Kitt shouted, for some reason.
“Oh!” shouted the voice. “Who are you?”
“Kitt Sunner.”
“Oh! Gren?”
“What, Jack?” Gren yelled.
“Who the hell is Kitt Sunner?”
“Just get out here before I march back and—“
“Okay, okay! Go easy! I’m injured!”
He grunted and lumbered out of the dark.
Jack was, to say the very least, a sight. I still remember the way he marched out of the dimness, shoulders hunched, boots clop-clop-clopping, and fingers wiggling inside of thick rubber gloves that extended up past his elbows, freshly-stained with a coat of motor oil. He was a thin and pale man with a head of dark, longish hair that shot out in e
very conceivable direction. He wore welder’s pants, strapped below the knee, a faded, sleeveless undershirt, smeared with greasy handprints, and a wide grin, manic and unrestrained.
He also was wearing, around his waist, a wide belt with an oversized cameo attached over the buckle. There appeared to be some sort of design painted over it, some image, but of what I couldn’t tell, as it was likewise sauced in oil and dirt.
Was it, perhaps, the same sort of emblem or insignia that Miss B was wearing?
As Jack approached us, his wild grin dissolved into a moping frown that seemed to be directed to Gren.
“Nice of you to join us,” snapped Gren, impatiently tapping his fingers against a metal plate in his arm.
“You didn’t hav’ta yell, ya know!” his acquaintance barked back.
“Apparently I did, because you were off hiding in the shadows!”
“Leave me alone. I’m injured.”
“Where are you injured? You look fine.”
“Look here.” Jack directed us to a slightly reddened streak just under his left shoulder.
“Wha…” Gren said, staring. “What, that’s it?”
“It was bleeding a second ago.”
“Aw, what happened?” Gren teased. “You get a little steam burn, Jack? One of the Priest’s cats nuzzle you a little too roughly?”
“There’s a priest on board?” Kitt asked.
“He has cats?” Dolly asked, wide-eyed.
“You saw that explosion!” Jack continued, ignoring the rest of us. “It could have easily taken my arm off!”
“And it would’ve served you right for screwing around with junk you don’t know how to work!” Gren spat.
“Aw, I know what I’m doing.”
“Since when?!?” Gren responded and then turned back to us onlookers. “Sorry to make you stand around and watch this.”
“Lovers’ quarrel?” I asked, tongue very deeply residing in my cheek. Gren’s eyes were flaming bullets, and he didn’t say a word. He just pointed a very threatening finger at me and then turned back to Jack.
“That horse’s ass is Will Pocket, the one I told you about.”
“Oh,” Jack said. “Hey.”
“And that’s Kitt Sunner and the…uh…the Doll.”
Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) Page 30