Gears of Brass

by Jordan Elizabeth

  August moaned and the horrid, sniffing beasts in front of me inched closer. My eyes darted to the left where the hover steamers sat in the driveway. My legs trembled and my vision blurred around the edges. If I didn’t make a run for it now, I could faint and these beasts would have me. Without giving my legs the command to move, I ran toward the steamers. Air passed from my lungs in hot rushes. My system was starting to overheat. Whatever August had given me contained more than a simple drug. Something was causing my Clinkets to malfunction.

  I reached the line of hover steamers and climbed onto the metal seat. I pressed the button to ignite the wick that would heat the water. Within seconds, the bottom of the craft lifted from the ground. The loud sound of steam whistling from the machine was sure to cause attention soon. I pressed the front bar and the machine lurched forward.

  August’s scream was cut off by a loud gurgle. I looked behind me to see one of those disgusting beasts gnawing on his severed leg. Flesh and muscle were stuck between the thing’s huge, misshapen teeth.

  When I turned back around, I had to jerk the front bar to the left to keep from smacking into a tree trunk. I followed the gravel driveway away from the retreat, sure that this must be the way into the city. My body drooped farther every moment that passed as the adrenaline rush left. The knife dropped with a clang to the metal floor of the steamer and I slapped myself, trying to stay awake. I slowed the steamer down and reached for the knife. I felt better with it in my hands.

  Thwack. The air left my lungs as I flew backward.. My back hit the hard road. I wheezed and sucked, trying to get breath. My eyes swam with tears. A figure hovered over me, blurred around the edges.

  “That looked like it hurt, dear.”

  I rolled onto my side, wiping the tears with the back of my hand. Elizabeth crouched at my side, a long branch in her hands.

  The hover steamer’s engine whined as if someone was bringing it closer at a slow speed.

  “Miss Elizabeth, we bests be on our way.” Mattie held her hand out to Elizabeth. “You two thoughts you were smarter than us, but we figured you two out first. How’s that poison feel gunking up them fancy works?”

  “One thing I’ve learned over the years, Lana, is not to discriminate based on social standing and money.” Elizabeth took Mattie’s hand and climbed onto the machine. “I knew everyone there were dogs, except for Mattie. And then I saw it when you came. The greed in your eyes.” She tsked. “But I knew Mattie and I had our escape after you fixed August.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Mattie’s words silenced me. “Here’s that fancy fiancé of yours now.”

  I watched helplessly as that unremarkable face with plain features pressed the bar forward and raced out of sight. I’d been bested by an old woman and a servant. I couldn’t even cry as a group of hover steamers surrounded me.

  “Lana.” Ollie’s thin lips smirked as he brushed my hair from my face. “There is a very sick girl who needs something you have.”

  I laughed as he pulled a syringe from his pocket. I knew I was going to die and I didn’t care anymore. I never cared about anyone in my life but myself. I had been consumed with what I had and what I could gain. Now, as death was here for me in a yellowish liquid held in the hands of a murderer, I look forward to seeing my father. Maybe to start over, if that sort of thing existed.

  “This is the end.” Ollie’s mouth brushed my forehead as he plunged the needle into my neck. Fire spread from my neck slowly down.

  “Nothing will work.” I giggled despite the pain.

  “What do you mean?” Ah, I knew that slithering voice. Dr. Burk.

  “August drugged me, and Mattie and Elizabeth poisoned me.” I tried to grin, but the muscles wouldn’t work properly. “My Clinkets are shutting down. They will never work right for anyone.”

  Numbness spread through my body. My breathing slowed. In my last moments alive, I relished in the satisfaction I couldn’t be harvested. Selfish to the last breath.

  askia Griseldis saw the non-reflective black silhouette of the Bali shoreline rising up on the horizon, standing out against the slightly lighter shimmering darkness of the ocean around it. She kept her airship low, the bottom of the passenger area almost touching the crests of the tallest waves. Off to her left, lights from the resort facility appeared exactly where they ought to be according to her charts.

  She had considered sending communication ahead to make reservations there, but had decided the benefits of getting immediate rest after her long trip over sea were outweighed by getting in country as quickly as possible. She knew Indonesian authorities were more likely to check tourists for passports closer to the coast.

  The tiniest sliver of the sun peeked over the ocean behind her. She needed to get the airship into the cove and camouflaged quickly.

  Near the beach, crosswinds buffeted her invention, what she wanted her father’s company to market as a PSZ, Personal Slimline Zeppelin. She fought the controls, putting the nose into the wind using the guide rudders and mini-sails to keep her heading straight and avoid crashing into the sand. She wanted to hurry, but it would do her no good if she died in the process, and that would prove her father right about the insanity of her “quest.”

  She piloted her way into the isolated cove, venting gas to set her craft down before the sun shown more than a quarter of the way over the horizon. Something crunched beneath the hull as it set down twenty-five feet off the edge of the white sand beach, back in a narrow gap in moderately dense jungle. No obvious cracks appeared in the deck beneath her feet. Saskia assumed the weight of the PSZ had broken a Banyan branch on the jungle floor.

  She unclipped the safety locks and tried to fold down the door. She shoved it with her shoulder, but it didn’t want to open. She had been in the confined space of the PSZ cabin with so little room to move the thought of being trapped made her push harder. The door crashed down into the underbrush, making much more noise than she wanted.

  Once outside, she allowed herself to take a deep breath. There didn’t seem to be any damage to her airship from the fast landing. She twisted the external valve to release the rest of the gas from the zeppelin, carefully pulling the gray material around the cabin. When it completely deflated, she stepped away from it, back into the jungle. From more than a few feet away, the camouflaged craft looked like a twelve foot section of a downed Banyan tree.

  The hard part is done, she thought. Next, I just need to get to Ubud before I collapse from exhaustion. She shrugged her way into the straps of her father’s old Dutch military rucksack with all the supplies she might need packed inside.

  She carefully picked her way through the woods, trying not to leave a path that could lead someone from the beach back to her landing spot. Twice, her long Delft blue skirt tried to snag in the undergrowth. Both times she untangled it without pulling or tearing at it, neither breaking the vegetation, nor leaving behind telltale pieces of cloth. A part of her wished she felt comfortable wearing leather pilot’s pants like the lady airship captain who had shuttled her between Horstermeer and London on her father’s private airship.

  As she stepped onto the sand already starting to warm in the morning sun, she saw him—a wiry man, not much older than her, perhaps twenty-five. He bowed his head slightly in her direction displaying a large, white toothed smile. She wished the tool wasn’t buried in the middle of the rucksack. A paranoid part of her brain wondered if he had seen her land the ship. His reflective brown eyes, dark wind weathered skin, and close cropped haircut, didn’t seem to hide any nefarious intent.

  “Bagaimana saya bisa membantu anda?”

  Saskia shook her head indicating she didn’t understand him. Using a gesture to hide her panic, she moved a hand to adjust her silver sequined hat that matched the embellishments to the top portion of her shirt. “Spreekt u Nederlands?”

  It was the man’s turn to shake his head. “Do you speak English?”

  A sense of relief flooded her. “Yes, I do.”

  His toothy
smile grew even larger. “You need guide back to Putra Bali?”

  For a second, she didn’t know what he was talking about, then she remembered Putra Bali was the name of the resort she had used as a navigation light. “No, I need to hire a cabby to Ubud.”

  His shoulders slumped and his grin faded a little. “That is several hours’ drive. Hari can show you beautiful things much closer.”

  “I am sure you can, but I have an arrangement to stay in Ubud tonight, and then I intend to go visit the Monkey Forest.” Blood rushed to the surface of her pale cheeks. The lack of sleep during the trip seemed to be impacting her. She’d told this stranger much more than she had intended.

  He scratched his head as if contemplating some great sacrifice. “For seven hundred thousand rupiah, Hari can get you to Ubud.”

  Saskia did a quick translation of guilders to rupiah in her head. At about one hundred guilders it would be an expensive ride, but within her budget. “Yes, we have a deal.”

  Hari pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and pointer finger. “No, no, no, you must bargain. Never buy anything for the first offer.”

  “Ah, yes, of course.” She smoothed out her skirt with her right hand. “How about six hundred thousand rupiah?”

  “Seven hundred thousand would be final offer, but for pretty Dutch lady… six hundred ninety thousand.”

  She examined the pattern of his light brown batik shirt before allowing her eyes to drift down to his thin legs and open toed leather sandals. She tried to put a smart seductive expression on her face. “Is it alright if I accept your offer now?”

  “Yes, though often the third offer will be the best.”

  “Thank you, Hari. You have a steam car nearby.”

  “No, I have a Tuk-Tuk. You come see. You will like it.”

  Hari led Saskia along the beach until they came to the manicured landscape surrounding the resort. There, he made a sharp right turn past several cabins. Just on the other side of the cabins, a small lot contained three odd looking vehicles.

  “My Tuk-Tuk.” Hari waved at the third of the landcrafts, as much a bow as it was an invitation for her to enter.

  Saskia hesitated. The thing didn’t look stable. It might have been just wide enough for two full grown adults to sit in the passenger area with a narrow single seat in front for the driver. It had two wheels in the back and a single turning wheel in the front. A rounded fin angled out the top of the passenger area for steam and smoke exhaust. It made her nervous, but she also liked the design. Everything about it appeared so different from what she grew up with in Holland, or the magnificent brass creations she knew from her school days in England.

  “Thank you.” She accepted his hand as she maneuvered carefully to keep her skirt from catching.

  Hari jumped into the driver’s seat while Saskia removed her rucksack, and set it carefully next to her. He took what looked like a block of black wood a little smaller than a traditional Dutch shoe from a bulging bag, and slid it into what she assumed was the fuel opening.

  Automatically, she kept track of which dashboard knobs he adjusted. She could read a steam pressure gage, almost immediately understood which was the igniter, and quickly figured out the rest.

  “In five minutes we will be ready, which resor you go to?”

  Saskia had a sudden urge to tell him everything, about her quest to find the spark, and all the steps she had taken to get this far. Instead she said, “I reserved a room in Pertiwi.”

  “You have good taste, miss.” He reached into a compartment behind the bag of wood chunks, and came out with two pairs of heavy leather driving goggles. “You will want these for the ride,” he said, handing her the smaller of the two.

  She considered digging her zoom goggles out of the rucksack and wearing them, but decided that might be insulting and accepted his goggles.

  She watched him as he checked the steam gage, adjusted a few more knobs to maximize the flow of the steam into the engine, tapped at the compass in the center of the dash, then finally pulled at a long lever set in the floor next to his seat. “We are now ready to go, miss.”

  The Tuk-Tuk surprised her. The ride felt surprisingly smooth, despite obvious ruts in the hard packed road that cut a winding path through the dense jungle. Air rushed around her refreshingly cool in the early morning.

  Before long, they began seeing other Tuk-Tuks, bicycles, rickshaws, and steam-wagons. Saskia found herself looking for vehicles pulled by Bali ponies. Surrounded by vivid shades of green and the occasional patch of flowers between the edge of the road and the jungle, it just seemed like a natural place for her to see the famous creatures. When she had almost given up on catching a glimpse of them, they came up on a double harness cart moving much more slowly than their Tuk-Tuk. Piled high with produce for the market and three people hanging precariously off the back, the cart was too wide to pass on the narrow section of road. When the road finally widened enough for them to drive around, she realized the broad backed harnessed animals were oxen, not horses.

  Saskia leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes beneath the driving goggles. The fruity, green scent of the wind filled her nose, so different from her village in Holland or the cobblestone streets of London. She tried not to think of her father or any of the Koninklijke Marechaussee he might have chasing after her.

  Images of the Silver Steam Man Guard marching mindlessly in front of Kensington Palace played inside her mind. She could hear the gears and well-oiled joints. She saw the second guard seize and fall. The others in the line behind it continued, each falling over him more like lemmings than dominoes. She found herself rushing up to them. The cacophony of crashing metal and thrashing limbs that no longer had solid traction to continue their key-card march assaulted her senses. She so wanted them to realize what was happening, to change their path, but despite how they looked when marching, they had no spark of life to them.

  Something around her changed: different sounds, different movement, lack of movement. She found herself struggling to open her eyelids.

  Her father’s voice echoed around her. “Here, you are here?”

  Had he caught her? She had come too far. Fear snapped her eyes open. Hari stood outside the Tuk-Tuk standing on stone paved roadway with her rucksack over his left shoulder. “We are here, miss. This is Pertiwi.”

  She struggled to get out. Her legs were stiff from sleeping in an awkward position. With her pocket watch in the rucksack, she couldn’t be sure, but from the position of the sun it looked to be past noon. Her little nap had been at least three hours. As the sleep cobwebs started melting away, she began to feel better, stronger, and more than a little hungry.

  They stood in front of a beautiful cottage with a thatched alang-alang roof surrounded by white barked palm trees. The large carved wooden sign in front of it said in several languages, Check In Here.

  A tremor of excitement ran through her. She felt so close. “I think I can get there from here, Hari. If you give me my bag, I will pay you, and you can get back.” As the words came out of her mouth, that flush of red hit her again. She had just told Hari he had all her money over his shoulder. He could take it, and there would be nothing she could do. Perhaps she hadn’t quite recovered from her thirty hours without sleep.

  “Oh no, miss. I get you checked in. Bring bag to your room. Otherwise, Hari, not earning his money.”

  From behind an ornate counter constructed from a deep reddish brown wood with abstract carvings of birds and monkeys, a woman with streaks of gray running through black hair waved Saskia and Hari in.

  Saskia admired the way the woman’s one piece light green dress, adorned with a pattern of darker green swirls, enhanced her slim body. “I am supposed to ask for Teteh Widjaja?”

  The woman grinned. Her teeth were not quite even, and could have looked threatening if the rest of her expression didn’t soften everything.

  “You must be Saskia. I am so pleased to meet you.” She flipped up a section of the counter, coming
through so the older woman could wrap her arms around Saskia in a warm hug before she could comfortably back away.

  “You look just like I imagined you would.” Teteh gave an assessing glance at Hari before asking, “Were you able to bring it?”

  Saskia nodded, then gestured at Hari to give her the rucksack. She dug through it, muttering under her breath in Dutch before finally pulling out a brass doll that looked like a half-sized penguin and set it on the floor. She lifted the left wing and twisted a small key until she felt the inner spring tighten all the way. Then, she lifted the right wing and pushed the button.

  It began to wobble forward. From joints in its hips, it bent down and pecked at a fuzz on the floor, impaling it. It tilted back. The unseen mini-conveyor caught the fuzz, pulling it down into the beak to be deposited in the internal rubber bag.

  “Oh, it is hebat; even better than you described in your letter.”

  “Then we have a deal?” Saskia let out a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding.

  “Dear girl, I would easily trade a month’s stay here for this marvel, and you only want a week. I am getting much the best of this. What do you call it again?”

  “Opraper. It means ‘pickup’ in my language. Just keep the flaw in mind. If the bladder gets too full, or it picks up something too heavy it will throw the balance.”

  “I understand. The girls will use it in the premium rooms after they have cleaned. They will love it. And speaking of rooms, I suspect you would like to get to yours.”

  “Yes.” Her exhaustion made it hard to speak in coherent sentences. “Of course. I would, but… have you seen it.”