by Cat Rambo
We ascended to a hilltop and saw a basin of fog in front of us, an immense white bowl. I started to say something about the odd flapping noise that was just starting to creep up on my consciousness but before I could begin, my lord shoved me sideways, then rolled in the opposite direction himself. A massive claw flashed in the space between us and rasped against the metal before the dragon swooped back upward.
“Hold tight” We leaped down the hill and into the fog.
My lord steered with face tense, watching the road flash by mere feet from our front wheels, not slowing. Overhead we heard the flapping of the wings.
Then the hoot of a train, off to the right, somewhat ahead.
“What are you thinking, sir?” I asked. “That’s not the Blue Train. It’s the train to the western coast.”
“I know,” he said. “But the crossing is up ahead, I can hear it.”
“But not see it.” Fog thickened and lessened around us; sometimes I could see his resolute face, other times he was lost to me. Overhead those wings flapped, and sometimes fire coiled, once a great wash of it directly overhead accompanied by a foul, sulfurous stench. My cap had blown off my head many miles ago, and I felt the hairs atop my head singe and vanish.
“Hold tight!” my lord yelled over the roaring of the wind and if he added anything to that, it was lost in the howl of the train and the sudden flap of wings and then somehow we were soaring through space just ahead of the train, so close I could count every bar in the cowcatcher in front of it and there was a vast scream and crash as the dragon and the train collided, and then a whoosh of flame, exploding outside, that cleared the world of mist and revealed chaos.
The train, one of the great black trains, lay folded and crumpled, intermingled with the thrashing of the dragon corpse, which reminded me horribly of a chicken I had seen once with its head removed, still dashing itself against a wall in search of the escape that it was far past. The train had been pulling three vast tanks; two had broken, and black liquid was spilling out, pooling.
Or was it black? The moonlight gleamed on it as black birds swooped down, a cloud of them, the ones that had been following us, transforming into humanoid forms, to kneel beside that vast pool. We both stood, speechless, at the spectacle of the vampires lapping up the encarmined landscape, the moon glowing emptily behind their eyes.
All those trains had a hidden purpose. Carrying tanks of blood, harvested from God knew where. Not just gallons of it – an immeasurable amount.
The parasitical rich, embodied, literally drinking the blood of the poor.
“Go!” my lord said urgently, pulling me towards the car.
Reunited with the Delahaye, we hurtled through the night. My mind raced. Supplies – the trains would allow the vampires to take the world. A group of them could overwhelm a city, and the trains would let them travel any distance to do so. Despair held my heart so tight I could hardly breathe.
We made it to Calais, scrambled aboard the ferry in the nick of time. My lord did not speak all the way as we moved over the sea, and the moon made nonsensical images with the froth atop each wave.
How did von Blodam get there before us? Some trickery, or perhaps a direct train. But he did, even as we pulled up with five minutes to spare.
There was irritation in his gaze as he said, “It seems you have won, Lord von Vulff. I regret to say the French authorites intend to fine you for racing on public roads.”
Amusement in his gaze, but something else…anticipation, perhaps.
“Indeed,” my lord said.
“Then claim your reward.” Von Blodam’s teeth glinted in the moonlight.
“What happened to Delarieve?” My lord’s voice was hoarse as though he had run every step of the way here.
I wanted him to be happy, despite it all. And I thought to myself, oh maybe, maybe.
“I believe you might have seen her along the way,” von Blodam drawled. “Some part of her.”
My lord stared at him, the beard on his cheek ragged and unkempt, his clothing in shambles from the trip’s wind, as though willing him to say more.
But all the further the answer the vampire gave was not in words: he simply licked his lips and smiled as the street traffic came and went around us and we stood in the future ruins of our world.
Afternotes:
This story came from reading history, where an actual bet like this took place, although sans dragon and for considerably lower stakes.
Ticktock Girl
Moment 20244660: She sits in the front parlor, covered with white cloth. Subdued spring light washes through the folds each afternoon. Behind her in the cavernous room, the tick tock of the grandfather clock echoes, counter pointed by the steps of the servant come to wind it. The maid must be accompanied by a girl in training today; they speak in quiet, subdued tones, bringing with them the smell of soap and lemon oil.
“Spooky, that’s what it is. ‘Ow long has it all sat here?” The voice is high-pitched, shot through with a nervous giggle.
“Since her ladyship died. Her father ordered it all covered up, and it’s sat here ever since. Going on ten years now.”
“What’s this now?” The dusty sheet, tugged by an inquisitive hand, slides off her face and the new maid lets out a shriek of surprise before she is quieted by the older one.
“That’s the lady’s mechanical woman. Used to walk and talk, they say. Still can. But her lordship said, sit here, and so she does.” With a deft rustle, the sheet is tucked around her again, but as the light dims, she preserves the sight of wide blue eyes, a mouth agape in astonishment.
“Walk an’ talk? Go on, yer pulling me leg.”
“That’s what they say. Used to march alongside her in the suffrage parades.”
A cog, imprisoned in her brain, ticks, and she enters a new moment, this one left behind.
Humans see time as a flow. A river, sweeping them along. But she perceives each moment, each tick and tock of the clock as a separate instance, presented as perfect as a gem inside a velvet box, each distinct minute collected within the celluloid and circuitry of her brain.
Moment 1: There is something hot and hard hammering inside her chest, but perhaps that is ordinary. She has no other moments to compare this one with, here and now in the first sixty seconds of life. All that exists is the face hovering above her where she lies on a table. The features are flushed with triumph and perspiration, a mass of golden brown ringlets falling around it, one touching her brass skin.
The lips open, and sounds come out. They have meaning attached to them. “Can you hear me?”
Her own lips move. The rubber bags that are her lungs contract, squeezing out air for her tongue to shape. “Yes.”
Water appears on her skin. In some other moment she will know these are Sybil’s tears, but not tears of sorrow, tears of joy. There will be many kinds of tears.
“I am Lady Sybil Fortinbras,” the face says. “I am your creator.” Then, with a laugh, “Creatrix, I suppose.”
The moment ends before she can reply.
Moment 25153800: The smell of seawater and musty cargo crates, part of so many moments, is gone. There is a long slow screech as each nail is withdrawn.
Moment 25153804: The lid comes off, and around her the packing material rustles as someone throws handfuls of it aside. Then her face is cleared and she sees him, hears his voice saying in German “A woman? What use is a mechanical woman to me? Schiesse!” He throws the last handful back and she watches it drifting down in slow motion, settling to block her sight again.
Moment 8820967: They are marching in a suffrage parade. Along High Street, hostile faces loom, shouting. She wheels Lady Sybil’s chair forward. Both of them wear white dresses, sashes of purple and green. Purple for courage, green for strength. The other women ignore her. She makes them uneasy, even though she may be the only reason the crowd doesn’t rush to attack them. But one, her face lean and resolute as a hatchet, leans forward to speak to Lady Sybil.
“Do yo
u agree with what Mrs. Pankhurst says?”
Lady Sybil glances up impatiently amid the sea of white ruffles. “That the argument of the broken pane is the most valuable argument in modern politics? Perhaps. But we will work within the law. For now.” Her eyes are shrewd as she looks at the people lining the street. “Why would we want the vote if we intend to go outside the bounds of the law?”
Moment 9097372: Lady Sybil is speaking. The winter has withered her even more. She is frail and fragile as a songbird.
“You see, I don’t think it’s enough to march anymore,” she says. “There has to be some good coming from you. In this brave new age, there are villains aplenty. I’ll set you after them. You have been my legs, my dear. My mechanical Athena. For so very long. And now you will be my fists.”
Moment 9156658: She has the dark-skinned, well-dressed man by the collar, pulling his limp form after her into the offices of Scotland Yard. She drops him in the doorway of Todd Chrisman, the detective who, she knows, has been working on the case.
“This is the Maharishi of Terjab,” she says.
His eyes are amazed. “Yes, I can see that.”
“He is responsible for the Soho white slave ring. You will find the evidence in his basement.”
He stammers out something, moves forward to look down at the Maharishi. “What are you?” he says.
“Lady Fortinbras’s mechanical Athena,” she says. “My directive is to fight evildoers.”
Behind him in the office, someone laughs, only to be hissed into silence by a fellow. All of these men are watching her.
Moment 9230101: “This is the Dog Collar Killer,” she says to Chrisman.
The man at her feet groans, recovering himself. He fought hard.
“He’s a clergyman,” Chrisman says, astonishment coloring his voice.
Pallid and rabbity, the man wears his robes like a squatter moved into a strange new place. He blinks, the bruises along his face coloring like dark water, and one eye weeps bloody tears.
“I am Father Jeremiah, and this is an outrage,” he says, pulling himself upward despite the restraining hand on his arm.
“Marilyn Bellcastle,” she says. “Lucy Stipe. Annabel Jones. He killed them all.”
He explodes in spittle and anger at the sound of her voice. “Whores!” he snarls. “Jezebels! They deserved no better!”
Moment 9618905: “What have you brought us now, lass?” Chrisman asks. She gives him the papers she has compiled, the blueprints for the bomb to be placed beneath the Houses of Parliament and he thanks her, riffling through the rustling papers one by one, studying them. There are new decorations on his uniform; her aid has brought him a promotion.
Moment 9713637: Lady Sybil’s father paces up and down the study, talking to himself. His cooling breakfast, the opened letter beside it, sits on the table. He wheels on her.
“Died in prison, by god!” he shouts. “Her and that Pankhust woman, thinking hunger strikes would change the gaolers’ minds. What good is it dying for a stupid, frippery cause, just another chance to dress up?”
She believes this is a rhetorical question; she makes no reply. She would have been with them, but Lady Sybil felt chasing the Ghost of Belfast was more important. Chrisman should have been pleased when she brought the villain in, but he was subdued, told her simply to go home.
“I’ll have every man in that prison to court,” Lord Fortinbras says. He looks at her, the way he has always looked at her. Half repulsed and half proud at his clever daughter’s creation.
“And you, mechanical Athena,” he says. “What’s to become of you now?”
There are tears on his face.
Moment 25055955: The crack of the gavel resounds through the crowded room as the auctioneer bangs the sale closed. “And sold to the foreign gentleman!”
Some of Lady Sybil’s friends are there, but none of them have bid on her. She is led away to the waiting crate. She feels nothing.
Moment 49189954: Professor Delta is speaking.
“The university bought you as a historical feminist treasure,” she says. “Built by an English suffragette and scientist. The once owned by Hitler stuff, that was just icing on the cake, a little thrill value. But now…nowadays people are more concerned with the rights of mechanicals than they were when you were sold.”
There is a gleam in her eye that is reminiscent of the Pankhursts.
“Do you really want to be on your own?” Delta says, leaning forward. She is a short, wiry woman, her hair cropped close, no makeup on her face. “What would you do?”
“Fight crime,” she says.
Delta leans back, her hand flickering in a dismissive gesture. “A superhero? Let the papers call you something like Ticktock Girl? How…trivial. It would be a terrible waste.”
She could go back in the crate. But Lady Sybil built her to move. To act. To be her hands, even now.
Moment 57343680: She faces Father Jeremiah in the closed room, cinderblock walls, the smell of disinfectant harsh and immediate. Somewhere in the distance, water drips.
She’s not sure how he can be alive, unchanged, a century later. But here he is.
“The Lord has preserved me! I am his Hand!” he shouts at her. She calculates the distance from her fist to his jaw, the amount of impact necessary to render him unconscious.
He draws himself up and smiles. “But you can’t. I’m legit now.”
The word is unfamiliar.
He splits it into syllables for her, serves it up like little rabbit pellets of words. “Le-gi-ti-mate. Everything I do is inside the law.”
“You tell people to kill other people and they do it.”
“All I do is provide information on where they are: the abortionists, the sodomites, the women who whore themselves out. My followers decide what to do with the knowledge.”
Seeing her pause, he laughs. “Welcome to the brave new world, Ticktock, mechanical clock,” he half sings. “Can’t touch this, can’t touch me now.”
Moment 9097375: Sickness has eaten away at Lady Sybil’s face, reducing it to paper over bone. But her voice is strong as ever.
“There is right and there is wrong,” she says. “You, my mechanical Athena, are always on the side of right.” A trembling hand strokes along the bright metal of her face. “The side of justice.”
Moment 57343681 seems to blend together with so many others, so many long circles of the wheels in her brain. And in that confluence, she knows that sometimes the argument of brick and fist are the only way. Chrisman would not approve, she thinks as she snaps Jeremiah’s neck. But Lady Sybil would.
Afternotes:
This is an early story that combines two loves: superheroes and steampunk. Computing the number of the moments was one of the more complicated aspects of the story.
Originally appeared on Patreon
Seven Clockwork Angels, All Dancing On a Pin
If a clock has ticked, it must tock, and thus time moves along. And in every tick and tock, there’s a story, and sometimes more than one.
Once upon a tick and tock, there was a great Lord and a greater Lady, who were Patrons of the Arts and Sciences. They endowed libraries and laboratories, and commissioned portraits and poems and marvelous machines that could play chess or spin a silk thread so fine you could barely see it or that could even build their own, tinier machines to make tinier machines in turn, and so on and so on, until they produced the head of a pin inhabited by seven clockwork angels, all dancing.
The Lord and Lady loved the works they commissioned, but they yearned to produce something of their own. And one day it came to pass that the Lady announced to her Lord that they had collaborated very well indeed, and that she would soon produce an heir.
Their daughter was fine and fair. They named her Aurora, after the Aurora Borealis, and to celebrate her christening, they invited all the scientists and artists and musicians and philosophers and inventors they had helped.
The day of the christening, Aurora was given amazi
ng gifts: a pair of spectacles that could see everything from the smallest cell to the farthest star; a flowering garden whose trees produced avocado pears and pineapples, cherries and peaches, all from the same branch; a clock that could tell her the time on the moon and predict the next three days’ weather with reasonable accuracy; a talking parasol that recited cheerful limericks in the morning to amuse her and long, languorous epics in the evening to lull her to sleep; and sundry other delightful devices and contraptions, each more cunning than the last.
But the Lord and Lady had neglected to invite one guest, a scientist named Artemus Scuttlepinch (who might have been omitted on purpose, for he was very bad at dinner conversation) and he stepped forward at the end.
“I have a gift as well!” he announced. “Behold the Cabinet of Dreadful Fates!” He whisked his dinner cape aside with a flourish, revealing a squat box painted a malignant black. Brass dials and switches covered its face.
Scuttlepinch steepled his fingers as though preparing a classroom lecture. “I have harnessed various eldritch and magnetic energies,” he said. “Whatever fate the machine pronounces for an individual, will come true, with 98% accuracy. And…” He sneered here, and would have twirled his moustache if it had been long enough. “The fates are never pleasant ones.”
Before anyone could stop him, he said, “This is for Aurora!” He pressed a switch.
The machine clicked and clattered ominously, and then clicked some more, finally producing a slip of paper. Scuttlepinch snatched it up and read it aloud. “On her eighteenth birthday, Aurora will prick her finger on a spindle and die!”