The Steampunk Trilogy

by Paul Di Filippo

  Emily appreciated Crookes talking so frankly and intelligently with her. He was really quite a nice man. Though of course not so splendid as Walt. She tried to reply in similar fashion.

  “What astonishes me, Professor, is that we are not literally stumbling over one child-soul or another at every single step.

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “Consider. How many millions and millions of dead have there been in the past, and how many millions more in the future? If Summerland is receiving any portion of them on a regular basis—though how the time disjuncture between the world’s figures, I cannot speculate—then the soil should be exploding with revenants every few feet. Ancient Romans and Greeks, Persians and Medes, not to mention future dwellers such as Allen.”

  Crookes was plainly awestruck by Emily’s analysis. After a moment’s cogitation, he replied, “I see no flaw in your reasoning, Miss Dickinson, and only two possible answers. Perhaps most of eternity’s dead have already made the transition to Summerland. This would mean that we have arrived here at a special time, a unique moment in the history of the afterlife. As a scientist, however, I tend to regard every situation as representative, until proven unique. Therefore, I lean toward the second postulate.”

  “Which is?”

  “That Summerland is practically infinite in extant. The dead are indeed arriving moment by moment in their teeming myriad—but scattered across a billion billion hectares.”

  “Then our meeting Allen so soon was sheer chance? And our prospects for meeting any of his necessary companions likewise dim?

  “It appears so. Unless, of course—”

  “What?”

  “We are assuming that the dead manifest themselves randomly, much like dandelions popping up in The Squire’s front yard. There is another alternative—”

  Emily supplied it. “That some Higher Principle ordains where they shall appear. That we were meant to meet Allen. And that our fate is in Unknown Hands.”

  Crookes looked disgusted. “How I hate to imagine some bearded Jewish elder as big as Mont Blanc continually peering over my shoulder and nudging my elbow! But I suppose anything is possible.”

  “Only events will prove which hypothesis is correct. After all, a rainbow convinces more than all philosophy.”

  Crookes laughed. “Miss Dickinson, you’re quite a rare woman! Allow me to place my services at your complete disposal, should you ever need them.”

  “Thank you, Mister Crookes, but I already have a protector.”

  Crookes smiled slyly. “Ah, so that’s how it is. Well, I wish you and your beau the best of luck. You both may need it.”

  Before Emily could completely decipher what Crookes implied, a shout rang out.

  “Rebirth ho!” pealed Walt’s clear tones.

  Emily glanced significantly at Crookes, who shrugged as if in mock defeat. Together, they hurried with the others to where Walt and Allen stood.

  The grass had already finished its transformation when they arrived. Congealed out of the thrashing warp and weft of the chlorophyll, the figure of a girl-child lay. As the spectators watched, she opened her eyes.

  “Don’t touch her,” warned Crookes. “Remember the adverse effect physical contact had on Allen—”

  Emily bent over the sweet-faced child. “What was your name, dear?”

  “Sill—Sill—Sylvia. . . .”

  “Is that all?”

  “All I remember.”

  Emily wanted to hug the little girl, but refrained. “That’s fine, darling. Look, here’s a friend for you—”

  Allen stepped forward and helped Sylvia up.

  “The sea,” she said as soon as they touched.

  Without any reference to the humans, the pair of naked toddlers resumed their determined westward progress.

  “Is it possible,” asked Crookes, “for something to be both alluring and horrifying?”

  “Have you never seen,” asked Walt, “a common prostitute in the city of orgies, with her charnel-house body of love?”

  Austin blanched and said, “Sir!” Madame Selavy tittered. Davis dealt with a speck on his glasses. Young Sutton chuckled.

  Crookes turned to Emily with a lifted eyebrow, as if to say, Good luck indeed with this mad beau!

  14

  “AN EAR CAN BREAK A HUMAN HEART AS QUICKLY AS A SPEAR”

  THE SLOW PERPETUAL Day moved along, but arrived nowhere. Emily heard its Axles go, as if they could not hoist themselves, they hated motion so.

  No Seasons were to her, it was not Night or Morn. It was Summer set in Summer, centuries of June.

  She was on an infinite trip down Ether Street.

  Emily had lived an eternity in Summerland. This was simple fact. There had never been an Amherst. Lavina, Mother, The Squire, Carlo—all were figments of her imagination. All that had ever existed were the unchanging landscape, her human companions, and the gaggle of children.

  There were six of them now: Allen, Sylvia, Hart, Delmore, Anne and Adrienne. Planted in the soil of Earth by their ignorant mourning loved ones, they had tunneled like industrious grubs, emerging out of their chrysalis, the mould, in Summerland, wearing the bright forms of youth, with Lethe-smoothed minds.

  Never tiring, needing neither to eat nor sleep, the children would plainly have moved on toward their however-distant mystic sea without pause, had they not been constrained by the humans. The bond formed between Allen and Walt, however, still held, and the children would halt when the humans did.

  At such times—irregular as they had become, as the travelers grew detached from earthly rhythms—the children would form a silent circle of introspection. Emily remembered the farcical seance conducted at The Evergreens; the children’s circle resembled that imbroglio as Parliament resembled a caucus of crows.

  What would happen when the seventh child was added, no one could predict. Even Allen claimed not to know. . . .

  Emily had no idea what kept the others going on this mad quest for escape from the afterlife. In her case, it was only love for Walt, and a dream of how their life together back on Earth could be.

  Emily and her Paumanok Paramour had not enjoyed another tryst since the first. Emily had not gone seeking Walt for another “midnight” assignation, and he had not come for her. This was fine. Even on the far side of death, it was well to observe propriety. Emily was content to know that their imperishable love still burned like a hidden volcano beneath the surface of their cordiality.

  How red the Fire rocks below, how insecure the sod. Did I disclose, it would populate with awe my solitude!

  She pitied the others their lack of such a bulwark, and tried to share her strength and cheer.

  But on this day—perhaps the seventh since their arrival, perhaps the seven-hundredth—there was precious little hope to be found among the weary travelers.

  When Walt’s familiar shout shook them out of their torpor, they moved only sluggishly toward the reincarnation, despite its climactic significance.

  “Our last tiresomely perfect child,” drawled Crookes as they surrounded the ultimate babe of the vegetation. “Does anyone hear the Final Trump yet?”

  Walt regarded the male child queerly, a look of rare unease on his face.

  “Something startles me where I thought I was safest! How can it be that this ground itself does not sicken, so full of dead meat is it? Where are the foul liquids it is stuffed with? If I run a furrow with my plough, I am sure to expose some of the foul meat! Every mite of this compost once formed part of a sick person, generations of drunkards and gluttons!”

  Walt fell to his knees and dug his fingers into the soil. “The very wind should be infectious!”

  Emily hastened to Walt’s side, dropped down and hugged him. “Walt, please! We need you! Do not succumb to delirium—for my sake!”

  Gradually, his sobbing abating,
Walt recovered. He stood and brushed soil-clotted hands on his pants. “Very well. I am not an earth, nor the adjunct of an earth. I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself.”

  “Much better,” applauded Emily.

  While Walt had been experiencing his moment of the terrible doubt of appearances, Madame Selavy had been circuitously approaching the newest child. Now, kneeling beside him, she spoke with saccharine sweetness.

  “Tell us your name, petit bébé.”

  “My name is Ezra—”

  Madame Selavy now shrieked, “Listen, Ezra, you devil! You’re going to damn well get us out of this hell, or I’ll kill you again myself!”

  The seeress clamped her hands around the child’s throat—

  And froze, as if pinned by Galvanic forces.

  From Ezra’s mouth emerged Madame’s voice, clear as a Unitarian church bell.

  “My name is Maude Frickett. I was born to an unmarried fishmonger in Fulton Market, New York. At age seven I was orphaned, and forced to live on the streets, taking shelter at night on a barge in the East River. At age ten, I was raped by sailors. At age thirteen, I became a prostitute. By fifteen, I had added picking pockets and serving gin to my skills. I put away money enough to open my own brothel by age twenty. When the police shut me down, I changed careers. I set up in Albany as a medium. That’s where Andy found me. He thinks he’s using me, but it’s the other way ’round. Nobody uses old Maude! Nobody’s smart enough. They’re all marks, everyone, just fit for plucking—”

  With an enormous effort, Madame Selavy yanked her hands away from the child, breaking the flow of secret speech. For a second or two, she remained kneeling. Then her eyes rolled back in their sockets and she collapsed in a swoon.

  Davis rushed to aid the stricken seeress, as did the others shortly thereafter. The children, meantime, calmly took charge of Ezra, who had likewise lost consciousness.

  After Madame’s unmoving form had been laid out comfortably among the tethered ostriches, Crookes voiced their common realization.

  “A form of thought transference—”

  Walt put it more poetically. “There was a child went forth, and the first object he looked upon, he became. . . .”

  Davis objected. “Surely you don’t believe that the nonsensical biography the child spouted pertains to Madame Selavy? It was plainly a case of a stray psychic broadcast from an errant soul, registering itself on the conjoined minds of Hrose and Ezra. . . .”

  Austin shattered Davis’s defense. “Come off it, Davis. Even if you are truly blind to the woman’s deceptions, you cannot expect us to continue so. You and Maude—as we should now refer to her—have been wrong about everything connected with this place. And don’t forget the time I found you compounding your ‘ideoplasm’ in my kitchen! God, what a fool I was to accept your jejune excuses! My grief must have made me mad and blind!”

  Davis broke down. “It’s true! God help me, it’s true. The ideoplasm is only raw cotton soaked in various salts and minerals which somehow glow. But there was never any intention of real deceit. Maude has a genuine talent, whatever her origins. We just wanted to help people deal with their sadness. We took only enough money to sustain us in a modicum of comfort—”

  Crookes was cupping his chin thoughtfully. “We must attempt to quantify your ideoplastic recipe, Mister Davis. It would put our whole transdimensional expedition on a more scientific footing. . . .”

  “Interesting as these confessions are,” interjected Walt, “and good as it is to unburden the conscience, they have little relevance to our plight. It appears that there will be no further developments until little Ezra awakes. May I suggest that we use this interval to get some rest? One of us should watch the children—”

  “I volunteer,” said Davis.

  “I will watch with you,” said Austin. “I don’t care to be deceived or tricked again.”

  “Mister Dickinson, I assure you—”

  “Please, spare me. Let us start our vigil.”

  The two moved off to within a few yards of the patiently waiting children, who were clustered around their recumbent comrade. Quickly, the remaining humans erected the three tents.

  “I shall maintain a close eye on Maude,” said Crookes, once the still-unconscious woman had been placed under his direction in his own tent. “I have some small medical knowledge, and should be able to minister to her. I am sure Miss Dickinson would appreciate not having to share her quarters with such a patient.”

  Under this new arrangement, all retired.

  Emily was restless. Try as she would, she could not summon sleep. What would happen when Ezra awoke? How had the charade conducted by Davis and Maude turned into grim reality? Would any of them ever see home again, or would they all die here, trailing off into madness first?

  With these thoughts and more bedeviling her, Emily resolved to seek Walt’s comfort and guidance.

  She arose from her pallet and left her tent.

  At the closed entrance to the tent shared by Walt and Sutton, Emily hesitated.

  A husky whispered voice filtered out.

  “O camerado close! O you and me at last, and us two only. With my arms draped around you, I am satisfied. What? Is this then a touch quivering me to a new identity? Flames and ether make a rush for my veins! The treacherous tip of me reaches out to help them. Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist, behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial, immodestly sliding my senses away! The udder of my heart drips sweet milk! Part the shirt from my bosom-bone! Settle your head athwart my hips, and gently turn over upon me!”

  Henry Sutton laughed, and replied, “Ya talk so funny, old man! But I loves yer anyhow.”

  Then all speech ceased.

  Emily stumbled backwards, an arm raised across her face.

  No, it could not be—She must be mistaken.

  From the tent came the unmistakable noises of pleasure Emily remembered from the night of her surrender to Walt.

  A queerly disturbing image from her schooldays surfaced: an ancient Greek statue of two naked Olympian wrestlers, ecstatic sinewy limbs intertwined—To learn the Transport by the Pain, as Blind Men learn the sun! This is the Sovereign Anguish! This—the signal woe!

  Tears obscuring her vision, Emily fled to her last refuge.

  Throwing back the canvas door of Crookes’s tent, she was on the verge of spilling her distress when the disorderly scene within registered on her senses.

  The pretend seeress seemed partially conscious, like a lazy sleeper fighting Morpheus, or a languorous debauchee. Her upper garments were pooled about her waist, exposing her generous endowments—quite normal in appearance, no leakage of ideoplasm evident.

  These attractions Crookes was slowly caressing, no resistance forthcoming.

  “Imagine—a common trull. Yes, you shall not refuse me—”

  Emily choked on an ocean of bile. Gagging, she fell back.

  She wanted to scream, but it was as if an invisible membrane had been stretched across her face, keeping all the horror inside.

  Was it her mind that was coming unhinged, or those of the others?

  At that moment, her brother’s shout rang out.

  “Quickly! The child awakes!”

  Emily staggered blindly toward Austin’s voice. If there had been so much as a pebble in her path, she would not have made it. But the grass offered no obstacle, and somehow she reached her brother’s side, falling into his arms.

  “Emily, what’s wrong—?”

  Love’s stricken “Why?” that breaks the hugest hearts was all she could speak.

  Before Austin could query further, the trio was joined by the other four.

  Crookes was half-supporting a hazy Maude, one of whose breasts was still exposed. Walt and Sutton wore only their long buttoned undershirts, which lucki
ly hung to their thighs.

  “Allen,” called out Walt. “What is happening?”

  The children had formed a circle. Within, the air seemed shimmery, as around the Thanatopsis’s ideoplastic tubes.

  “Now that we are whole, we are going to the sea,” replied the child.

  “Take us with you!”

  There was a moment of silence, as if the children were communicating. Then: “Very well. Enter the circle.”

  Breaking hands with one partner, Allen made a gap.

  Slowly, knowing they had no choice, the humans shuffled within.

  Emily thought about hanging back, letting the others go, so she could die alone in her misery. But at the last second, she found her feet moving in synchronization with the others.

  The circle was reformed.

  The air around the humans seemed to thrill and vibrate. Emily thought, There is a morn by men unseen, where children upon remoter green, keep their Seraphic May. And all day long, with dance and game, and gambol I may never name, they employ their holiday. Ne’er saw I such a wondrous scene. Ne’er such a ring on such a green—

  There came now a hum felt only in the bones—

  Humans and children stood on the seashore.

  Yet it was not a shore of sand.

  A vast tongue of water lapped a gently sloping bank of grass.

  And the water itself was green as a spring apple, and unrippled as a silken shroud upon a corpse.

  The instant transition left Emily stupefied, and the others plainly also. Too much had happened too fast. Her limbs went to jelly, and she dropped down on the turf.

  The children separated into a line, facing the ocean.

  Allen turned to Walt. “Goodbye, father.”

  The reborn souls began to walk into the sea.

  The slope must have been precipitous. Only a yard from the shore, they were submerged up to their chins.

  A step more, and the water closed around their heads.

  They were gone.

  The humans’ last hope for escape had disappeared. . . .