The Long Past & Other Stories

by Ginn Hale

  “Nothing except that I thought you were smart and quick. Obviously I didn’t know the half of it, seeing how fast you rabbited off.” Geula shrugged. For a few moments, she stared out at the vast crowds passing below us and filling the air with their conversations and laughter.

  “Did you really think I’d turn you over for a reward?” Geula asked me.

  “I…” I had feared as much, but I felt ashamed of myself now, with Geula giving me that disappointed look. We hadn’t been together long, but I did know her. I’d seen her stand up to hecklers and bullies, and I’d stood beside her when she’d block the path of a patrolman bent on beating down a beggar. Geula stuck to her principles. She wouldn’t sell out a friend, not even for a hundred-dollar mage bounty, I truly believed that.

  “I didn’t really think. I just ran,” I admitted.

  “Those Jersey theurgists put some real fear in you, didn’t they?”

  This time I shrugged. It hadn’t been the theurgists themselves who’d ingrained this terror into me; they hadn’t needed to bother. The mere threat of them had been enough to keep my family constantly moving—abandoning homes and jobs in the dead of night, changing our names and always keeping our bags packed. I’d been brought up afraid.

  And when my uncle had finally found something like a stable home for his wife and me, it had been in the isolated grounds of Menlo Park, in New Jersey. There, Mr. Edison had provided housing and employment, all the while hammering in all the horror we would suffer if we forced him to report us to the Office of Theurgy and Magicum.

  “They will lock you in a prison laboratory. Feed you gruel and then dissect you like a rat,” he’d often informed me with a smile. “That would be a shame.”

  The shocks and burns I’d endured while he had tested his electric collars had been accompanied by reminders that official theurgists could and would do far worse to me, my uncle and my dear crippled auntie.

  “I guess I should have given you more warning about the three of them coming to the show.” Geula’s words brought me back from my troubled memories. “I worried that knowing sooner would make performing all the harder for you.”

  Likely I wouldn’t have set foot on stage at all. I didn’t feel like admitting as much.

  “So what were the Jewels after you for anyway?” I asked.

  “Well, it was Mrs. Palmer who I’d worked for before,” Geula replied, but then she cut herself off as a group of men in musty fur coats strolled past us, loudly proclaiming their wonder and excitement over the Machine Maid in the Technology Hall. Apparently the new automaton might well “unburden men from the hysterics imposed by the fairer sex”.

  Geula scowled at the men and I just smirked.

  They weren’t such catches that any of the fairer sex was likely to impose anything on them but a steep entry fee.

  “Four years back”—Geula returned to her story, leaning close to me—“Mrs. Palmer’s favorite cook went missing. I tracked the woman down and managed to barter her back from Roger Plant—”

  “I don’t know who that is,” I admitted. Most of the five months I’d been in Chicago, I’d worked here at the exhibition. I’d rarely even wandered far from the theater complexes. The one exhibit I’d convinced myself to pay the ticket price to enter had been the Wonders of the Western Territories. There they’d had towers of fruit from California, heaps of Nevada borax, and live specimens of beautiful, feathered dinosaurs from Colorado farms. (Their plumes adorned a great many expensive hats worn by society ladies, I’d learned.) What I knew of the city beyond the exhibition grounds came largely from the papers and gossip. I’d heard nothing of a Roger Plant.

  “Nice for you, then.” Geula made a face like she was recollecting having a tooth pulled. “He runs a place called Under the Willow in the Levee. His beer isn’t worth the nickel he charges, but he pulls certain men in with the girls he keeps in his backrooms. Not all of them are there willingly. It took a little doing with my pistol, but I managed to convince him that the cook wasn’t worth the trouble he’d bring down on his own head if he kept her.”

  I stared at Geula. I’d known she’d traveled in tough company and had been more than an actress before I’d met her in the theater, but I hadn’t quite imagined this.

  “So they want you to find someone again?” I asked.

  “They’re offering seven hundred dollars,” Geula said quietly. I stared at her. That was more than I could’ve hoped to earn in two, maybe even three, years. I didn’t doubt the Jewels could afford as much, but I did wonder who they could value so highly…or who they feared crossing so badly.

  All around us, small electric lights lit up, like ornate constellations thrown across the exhibition buildings. Four of them on the far wall formed a shining crown behind Geula’s head.

  “This time Miss Addams has a girl missing from her charity house.” Geula’s expression went a little distant and hard. “Liz Gorky is the girl’s name. She’s nineteen, dark-haired and doe-eyed. She took work at a hotel called World’s Fair but hasn’t returned for a week now.”

  “Seven days isn’t so long, particularly not for a grown woman who’s found work. Maybe she’s had enough of living under the thumb of a bunch a nosey temperance women.”

  “I thought that too. But it turns out she left her infant daughter in Miss Starr’s care,” Geula went on. “And according to both Miss Addams and Miss Starr, Liz doted on her daughter and fretted over leaving her for even one afternoon. Neither of them believe she simply abandoned her child.”

  I didn’t see what Geula or I could really do about the situation, but at the same time, I wasn’t entirely unmoved. I’d lost my parents quite young and still wondered what they might have thought of me if they had the opportunity to know me. I couldn’t keep from feeling sympathy for the child.

  “Have they gone to the police?” Plenty of missing folk turned up in their morgues. If she wasn’t there, then the Jewels likely had the pull to get a citywide search started. That was more than Geula or I could do for them.

  “Miss Starr went to them right away, but they weren’t much help. They questioned Liz Gorky’s employer, a man named Herman Mudgett. He insisted that Liz had met a salesman and run off with him, which was good enough for the crushers, apparently. But then three days ago Miss Addams saw Liz Gorky here—”

  “So, she ran off but not very far?” I asked.

  “She wasn’t attending the exhibition,” Geula whispered. “She was an exhibit.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to see her for myself.” Geula started to turn away but glanced back at me over her shoulder. “You coming?”

  ●●●

  Inside the lofty Technology Hall, a promenade wider than most city streets looped through hundreds of exhibits. The air hummed with thrilled voices, engine sounds and the bright calls of the various men presenting the inventions on display. Here and there mechanical devices stood cordoned off behind curtains and velvet ropes; some were staged like studies, kitchens or even gardens (complete with flowerbeds and trellises of ivy). Other innovations, like Mr. Moreau’s silver alchemic train engine, served as structures in and of themselves.

  Throngs of men and women dressed in their best clothes—hats, bonnets, gloves and a treasury of jewelry, watch fobs, buckles and cufflinks—crowded around magnificent displays of gleaming brass and whirring clockwork. Children, dolled up in suits and gowns, capered between wonders, exclaiming over steam-powered miniature trains and gaping as toy-sized alchemic airships whizzed overhead.

  Towering above everything else, two huge silver columns of electric coils rose up from a stepped platform like gleaming monuments. I paused as a bolt of violet light arced up from the polished silver orb topping one of the columns. All around me, the air suddenly raced with charges. Tongues of lightning crackled through each breath I drew and seemed to set my blood bubbling like champagne. The hairs across my
body stood on end like they always did when I felt a storm coming.

  Geula cast me a sidelong glance and followed my stare up to the violet bolt as it reached the second tower. “I read something about Mr. Tesla’s coils making coal and alchemic stone obsolete,” she commented. “But I don’t recall exactly how.”

  “Me either, but I feel like I might start spitting lightning and thunder if I come any closer to them.”

  We skirted around the two columns, passing a lovely-smelling exhibit, where attendants in white aprons worked at ornate machines that stamped out exquisite bars of chocolate. Geula and I both accepted the samples offered. (If we hadn’t been on something of a mission, I would have circled around for a second bar.)

  At last we came to the various displays of clockwork automatons and alchemic prosthetics. The wandering narrow alleys created by the numerous exhibit stalls stood largely empty compared to the crowded isles surrounding the displays of engines, guns, sewing machines and chocolates. Most of the other sightseers wandering the narrow avenue appeared to be war veterans and medical men; several even carried their surgical bags with them.

  I knew that many people found the sight of artificial limbs disturbing, even those crafted from oak and hickory and inlaid with copper and gold spells, like these resting on satin pillows in glass cases all around us. But I gazed at the displays with a feeling of nostalgia and comfort. The sight of ivory fingers carved with lacey spell patterns brought memories of my aunt and uncle back to me in a rush. The subtle scent of machine oil and rose perfume seemed to float around me as I recollected carrying my uncle’s creations from his cluttered workshop to my aunt’s parlor. She always took a little time to fit on a new leg. I waited for the moment when she reached out and took my hand and slowly danced around the room with me.

  My uncle always etched a heart into each of his designs for her.

  Now I found myself looking through these disembodied limbs for that telltale trace. I stopped myself just as I extended a finger towards a delicate, outstretched hand. Of course the heart wasn’t there. Both my uncle and aunt were dead. The only remains of them rested in a black cabinet back in my backstage dressing room. The one thing I was likely to do if I touched one of these finely tuned prosthetics was to jolt a spell to life and give myself away as a mage. I carefully tucked my hands into the pockets of my coat.

  Beside me, Geula craned her neck to take in the banners and signs hanging in the distance.

  “It’s the Mechanical Maid we’re after,” Geula informed me. She drew a small square of paper from her pocket and studied it. A pale, round-faced young woman with her hair in ringlets and startlingly large, dark eyes stared up from the photograph.

  “Is that Liz?” It struck me as odd that a girl so poor that she was living in a charity house could afford to have her photograph taken, much less look so imperious when she did.

  Geula frowned at the image but nodded. An instant later, she slipped the picture back into her coat. We walked deeper into the exhibits, encountering more and more complete automatons amongst the prosthetic limbs, false teeth and glass eyes.

  Clockwork birds sang from atop tiny metal perches, and delicately glazed butterflies fluttered tin wings. At the entry of one large stall, two automatons balanced atop pedestals like sentries. One stood about two feet tall and a child’s pinafore covered the joints of its abdomen and groin; in place of the normal porcelain mask, its clockwork inner workings lay exposed around the two wide glass eyes. The automaton standing opposite it resembled an organ grinder’s monkey, complete with grimacing white canine teeth. A key, carved from pearly alchemic stone, hung from a string around its neck, awaiting a human hand to slide it into the hole over the creature’s machine heart and bring it to life.

  “Can I assist one of you, miss?” A neat man, sporting a mustache so waxed that it looked like a pastille of black licorice, stepped out from between the two automatons. He looked to Geula, though I’d been the one lingering to study the exposed gearworks. (It didn’t possess half the lustrous alchemic stone that powered the spells etched in Professor Perfectus’s armature.) Between my dark complexion and quiet manner, it was common for people to mistake me for Geula’s lady’s maid. They were often shocked almost speechless if they discovered that I employed her as an assistant.

  “No. We’re simply looking,” Geula informed the fellow. He frowned and stepped forward to partly block our way.

  “Many of the devices farther along this aisle aren’t all that suitable for the delicate sensibilities of women.” He spoke in the hushed tone of an undertaker cautioning against opening a casket. “But across the hall there’s an entertaining demonstration of a mechanical loom that produces the prettiest dress fabrics. And back the way you came is a charming music box shaped like a white kitten. I’d imagine that would be more suitable, wouldn’t you?”

  “I certainly have no idea of what you might imagine, sir. Suitable or otherwise,” Geula replied, and she stepped past him. I laughed and followed her.

  It soon became obvious why he’d been so anxious to keep us from strolling any farther along this avenue. The designs of the automatons we passed steadily turned from entertainment or medical purposes to warfare. Blades and clubs replaced limbs, while the dark barrels of heavy guns loomed up at head-level. Few of these automatons resembled human beings, much less songbirds or butterflies. Most looked more like gigantic crabs, scorpions and spiders but assembled entirely from armories.

  And I did find it disturbing to see several of the things painted not only in military colors but with police seals emblazoned across them and badges soldered to their housings.

  “As if the crushers aren’t nasty enough already with their billy clubs and pistols,” Geula muttered.

  I considered the automaton, remembering the comments my uncle had so often made about such creations when they came up at the labs in Menlo Park.

  “No city could afford to actually maintain a force of those things. Maybe they’d order one, but it would cost too much to risk on actual raids. I bet it’s really meant to stand guard and simply appear threatening,” I assured her. “All those joints are incredibly expensive to build and repair. And the amount of alchemic stone needed to power a platoon of them would cost far more than it would to hire an army of men.”

  “But there are some things—truly evil things—living folks flat out won’t do,” Geula said. “Whereas an automaton couldn’t care, could it? Whoever’s registered on its collar as the owner could make it do anything.”

  “True, but that doesn’t mean it would succeed,” I replied. “Between the gold wires and the alchemic stone used for their cores, I suspect that even if an army of these spiders were let loose they wouldn’t last too long. See that seam between the inner workings and the top where the alchemic stone is housed? It wouldn’t take a minute to sever the couplings there. Once they’re shut down, then, easy as you please, anyone can rip them up and even resell their parts.”

  Geula pulled her gaze from a looming automaton with a head like a spider’s and half a dozen sabre-tipped legs. She looked to me. I wasn’t sure what she read from my expression, but it brought a grin to her face.

  “You really are a genius, aren’t you?” Geula whispered to me. “And I bet you could stop this monster dead with your bare hands.”

  Briefly, I considered the hulking, insect-like machine. All the ambient power in the air seemed to crackle around me. Right now, with a touch of my hand, I could burn through the automaton’s wires and cogs. Another time or somewhere else, it might be a different matter. But I loved it when Geula looked at me like this, and I wanted her to think the best of me being a mage. So, I simply smiled and nodded.

  As we turned around a bend, we suddenly bumped up against a dense crowd of men. The vast majority appeared cued up to shoulder their way into the blue-velvet tent displaying a red banner that proclaimed the many advantages of the New Mechanical Maid.


  Devoted! Obedient & Adoring!

  Woman, as She was Always Intended!

  Built to Serve Every Need!

  A voluptuous line drawing of a parlor maid with little wheels attached to her heels and a doll-like face hung beneath the banner.

  “Two cents says this is nothing but a couple working girls rubbed down with silver powder and wearing copper-wire pasties on their tits,” Geula whispered against my ear. “Bet they’re selling the world’s oldest trade as new technology.”

  “Maybe…” Something in the air disturbed me, and it wasn’t just the dust of too much face powder. A definite and terribly familiar vibration pulsed from behind the curtains. I couldn’t get a clear view of the big fellows at the front through the crush of men surrounding us, but their bulky figures made me extremely uneasy.

  “It might be more simple than expected to get Liz out of this,” Geula went on as we crept forward with the line of men. “Whoever’s putting up this front won’t want to have it exposed here by a scene.”

  “I don’t know. I think there might be more going on—”

  All at once, the crowd of men surrounding us rushed and jostled forward, pushing Geula and I ahead into the dim interior of the tent. The warm air inside felt torpid and smelled of sweat and stale cigar smoke. The mob flooded around a raised brass-colored platform and carried Geula and I near enough that I could make out the lines of the dark curtains behind the platform. Two rows of electric lights lit up its floor. It was a portable stage, complete with a hidden space in back and a generator humming below the platform.

  A stocky man in his late forties, wearing a dapper brown tweed suit, parted the curtains and stepped into the light. A thunderclap of applause went up from the men all around me, and I caught my breath in horror. My pulse seemed to race so fast that it sent tremors through my hands.

  Next to me, Geula appeared perplexed as she took the man in.

  “Is that—”

  I forced his name out. “Edison.”