Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded

by Jeff VanderMeer

  “This alone would have stopped most men,” Meriwether said as he indicated a long gash on the woman’s arm. “And yet, I would swear it was the injury first delivered.”

  Balfour nodded silently and dabbed the deeper wound in her side with gauze soaked in a numbing solution of liquefied cocaine. The woman murmured, her brow furrowed, and she shifted away from his touch. The two men paused, waiting to see whether she would regain consciousness, and when she did not, returned to the careful business of stitching her skin back together.

  “Impressive,” Balfour said grudgingly.

  Without warning, the room spun around Meriwether. Ceiling, window, door, and wide-eyed Balfour swam past in the space of a heartbeat. A sharp pain bloomed in his neck and a dull one in the joint of his left shoulder. He found himself on his knees, arm locked behind him, and his physician’s scalpel cutting into the flesh over his jugular. Balfour chuckled.

  “Very impressive,” he said.

  “I do not believe I have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance,” the woman, Meriwether’s captor, said. Her voice buzzed with anger and fear.

  “Balfour,” Balfour said, then waved a thick hand at his mortally threatened compatriot. “Meriwether.”

  “We came upon you as the clockwork beast struck you down, madam,” Meriwether said. “We have since bent ourselves to the preservation of your life. I assure you we had no designs upon your virtue.”

  “The clockwork...the...oh God, it has escaped!”

  Meriwether felt the grip on his arm relax, the blade withdraw from his neck. When he stepped away from his guest, he encountered no further violence. Balfour handed him the cocaine-soaked gauze to apply to the trickle of blood on his neck.

  Strength had left the woman as suddenly as it had come, and she sank back to the divan, head in hands. In her distress, she was oblivious to her own wounds and the damaged condition of her garments. Balfour wrapped a blanket over her shoulders.

  “You know of the thing,” Meriwether said.

  “I do,” the woman said, her voice thick with despair.

  “You are, I must assume, associated with the Kohanim?”

  The woman looked up, surprise in her dark eyes.

  “You know?” she whispered.

  “I surmised,” Meriwether said, taking a chair. “Lord Abington was well known as an enemy of the Jewish race. Whatever ill-conceived notion instigated this tragedy, it saw its birth in His Lordship’s fevered brain. I had not believed in the connection until I knew that a second party was also hunting the thing from the sarcophagus. Had you been an ally of Lord Abington, there would have been no need to hide in the shadows outside the museum. Thus it followed you were his enemy. The affair is thick with the reek of secrecy, and I assumed that the priestly class of your race would be the most likely to involve themselves. In truth, I know little more than that.”

  “My father was Rabbi Isaac Cohen,” the woman said. “I am Rachel. And the thing that I failed to end tonight was the greatest evil the world has ever faced.”

  Balfour rang the bell for Mrs. Long as Meriwether leaned back in his chair.

  “I suspect our assumptions on the matter may have been in error,” Meriwether said. “I was hoping you might enlighten us.”

  Rachel looked down, some inner debate raging in her mind. When, a moment later, her gaze rose to meet theirs, the uncertainty was gone. She was, it was clear, a woman well-suited to committed action.

  “These are secrets that were never to be known outside the deepest circles of my people,” she said. “As a woman, even I should have been barred from them. But it was my father’s judgment that I should know, and so he chose to break the silence. And I make that same judgment now.

  “You should know, gentlemen, that there is at work a conspiracy within the Jewish people which reaches back through all the ages of mankind. We have suffered deeply for its preservation, and we shall, I am certain, suffer again in the future. To be the chosen of God is not a blessing, but a grim responsibility. And despite the wild conclusions of Lord Abington’s ilk, I assure you this conspiracy is not aimed at the control of the world, but the world’s continuation.

  “There is an occult history, hidden within the passages of the scripture which you call the Pentateuch. Thirty-six men in each generation are chosen to carry the truth behind the symbols, and my father was one of these. Because of that, I can tell you this: Many thousands of years ago, not long after the expulsion from Eden, there was an age of universal slavery that has been wiped from the histories. I cannot say where the Masters came from. Some rabbis say they were angels fallen after a war in heaven, others that they were God’s rough designs for mankind given life as our punishment for disobedience. All the remaining records agree that a great comet appeared in the sky, and within a year, all humanity was bent under the yoke of mechanism.

  “You have seen it with your own eyes, and so you may believe me. A race existed built of metal, gears, and glass. They knew no weariness and no love. Deep within them was a hatred of all things cool and growing, of life that springs from a woman’s womb instead of a machinist’s forge. In Egypt, their greatest power grew, and from Egypt, the great forests of Saharan Africa fell to dust and desert. Generations of mankind raised up monuments that touched the sky itself at the cost of blood and suffering and death. Under the cruel metal whip of the Masters, we achieved greatness and saw Nature itself begin to die at our hands.

  “The Jewish people led the revolt which broke the power of the machine intelligences. The twelve plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, and the flight from Egypt are echoes of a much deeper and more painful story. A story that I have read. Suffice it to say, gentlemen, that humanity’s freedom was purchased at a terrible price. And preserving that freedom, seeing that mankind is never again bent double beneath inhuman feet, has ever since been the secret charge of my people.”

  “Why secret?” Balfour asked as Mrs. Long appeared, fresh tea and cakes on a tray.

  “Not all traces of the Masters were destroyed,” Rachel said. “And not all men glory in the burdens of freedom. Almost as soon as the Masters fell, others began to imitate the tyrants under whom their parents had suffered. Had small-minded, petty, evil men gotten hold of the tools of the Masters, they would soon have re-created the dreadful mechanisms themselves, thinking that common cause could be made with them and learning their error too late, and to the debasement of all creation.”

  “Small-minded men like Lord Abington,” Meriwether said, pouring the tea into cups. His neck had almost stopped bleeding. “Your mission was not merely against the contents of that tomb, but also the man who sought to free it.”

  Rachel smiled and shrugged.

  “I would have been as happy to persuade him through reason, had he been willing to listen,” she said. “It was imperative that no artifact complex enough to fashion its own kind be set loose upon the world. The cost of one man’s life would have been small enough. But I was too late, and now an enemy of life is set free. I fear we are doomed.”

  “Early days yet,” Balfour said. Meriwether could hear in his tone how fond he had become of Rachel, even on this short and unlikely acquaintance.

  “And that,” Meriwether said, raising his cup to the clatter of hooves and carriage wheels, “may be the very man to give us the tools of our salvation.”

  Balfour rose to his feet and poured out a brandy. Moments later, Lord Carmichael burst into the room. His eyes were wild, his cravat slightly disarrayed.

  “My God! Meriwether! Balfour! Where have you been? Half of Scotland Yard is rousted out of their beds and combing the city, and you pair are...”

  He caught sight of the beautiful woman clad in shredded armor, blood, and Mrs. Long’s often-stained visitors’ blanket. Balfour pressed the glass of liquor into his hand.

  “You misled us, old man,” Meriwether said. “All this blather about Napoleon reaching back from the grave. Entirely untrue. Though, to give you partial marks, your worst mistake was ch
oosing the wrong Emperor.”

  “Wrong Emperor?” Lord Carmichael echoed, then collected himself visibly. “What do you mean, wrong Emperor?”

  “Not Boney,” Balfour said. “Pharaoh.”

  CHAPTER THREE: THE FALL OF EMPIRES

  “The first and best solution would have been containment,” Meriwether said, pacing slowly past the great window which night had turned to a dark mirror. The others sat sipping tea and brandy with the superficial appearance of ease, though only Balfour’s dark eyes seemed truly calm. “That option is lost to us. Instead, we must locate this unwelcome visitor. Our options are twofold. We may adopt the standard practice of raising a great force of sleepy policemen and setting them out scattershot from Pall Mall to Whitechapel.”

  Meriwether nodded to Lord Carmichael. His Lordship replied with a slight bow that was a marvel of physical sarcasm.

  “Or we can attempt to divine our enemy’s intention and anticipate its actions,” Meriwether continued. “As Scotland Yard is pursuing the first course, I suggest we turn ourselves to the second and put ourselves in its place.”

  “This is your best investigative tool? Imagine yourself to be a millennia-old clockwork?” Lord Carmichael asked.

  “Saddened,” Rachel said. “I believe I should feel quite a terrible grief.”

  Meriwether and Balfour exchanged a glance, and Meriwether nodded.

  “Go on,” Balfour said.

  “When last it looked upon the Earth,” Rachel said, “it stood in the great deserts of Egypt. Dryness and heat and lifelessness were all around it, and marked its great victory. To rise up in the chill and damp of London...a place swarming not only with humanity, but dogs and horses and cats. Rats.” Her face had taken on an almost pitying aspect. “All that it knew and celebrated must seem dead from the world, and London its sepulcher.”

  “Fits,” Balfour said.

  “Yes,” put in Meriwether. “When first we saw it, it had an air of grief and mourning about it. Along with a deep and terrible rage. Very well. That’s progress. We can say that it isn’t likely to seek out common cause with humanity. Its first act was the slaughter of a prospective ally. Perhaps in its isolation, it may despair and collapse of its own accord.”

  “It will attack,” Rachel said. “Without mercy or pity, but with intelligence. And it need not be alone. It is quite capable of assembling another of its kind. Or of any of a thousand other designs.”

  Meriwether rocked back a moment, his eyes closing, the blood draining from his face.

  “Of course,” he said. “I had thought it could have no allies because it had refused Lord Abington’s outreached hand, but its allies need not be human. Need not even be living.”

  Balfour reached for his brace of knives. Meriwether leapt across the room, scooping up his black greatcoat. Rachel rose as well, only a slight narrowing of her eyes indicating the pain of her wounds.

  “What? You think it’s going to Big Ben like a duckling following its mother?” Lord Carmichael said.

  “I suspect it is seeking out machine works, My Lord,” Meriwether said, his voice absent of its usual friendly mockery. “Indeed, it almost certainly has already done so. Reach whom you can of the Scotland Yard forces. Instruct them to narrow the search. Focus their attention on factories and rail yards, especially those with forges.”

  “Where are you going?” Lord Carmichael asked. His voice was sober.

  “Underground,” Balfour said.

  “It knows the habits of its former slaves,” Meriwether said, checking his service revolvers. “It must therefore know that humanity rises with the sun. Whatever it intends, surely it will have set dawn as the mark for its accomplishment. Its best hope of working unnoticed is the underground railway. In all of London, only there will it have coal, iron, and solitude. I fear it will need little more.”

  “God go with you,” Lord Carmichael said.

  “Not God alone,” Rachel Cohen said, casting off the blanket.

  “No, madam,” Meriwether said. “No one can respect your determination and ability more than I, but you are grievously injured. You have done what was needed. Balfour and I shall end this thing for you, and for your father as well.”

  Rachel Cohen spoke then, several sharp words in the Hebrew tongue. Meriwether answered in that same language, and the woman sat down slowly.

  Balfour cleared his throat and nodded meaningfully toward the door. Meriwether bowed to the woman seated proudly upon his divan, then to Lord Carmichael.

  Once the door had closed behind the pair, Lord Carmichael turned to her.

  “Don’t concern yourself,” he said. “We’ll be seeing those two again shortly.”

  “I fear you may be mistaken,” she said, and the calm and sorrow of her voice chilled his blood.

  The Farringdon Station had been closed since before midnight. In this dead hour, no watchman answered their calls, and Balfour was forced to snap the great lock. The pair descended into a darkness as deep as the grave. A glass lantern hung by the side of the platform and when lit gave a dim orange light. Balfour took it, the cheap metal clinking and groaning as they lowered themselves to the tracks. Meriwether drew his service pistols. The fog had penetrated even here, giving the narrow tunnel before them the illusion of great distance though the light could not have reached more than twenty feet before them.

  “There,” Balfour said.

  “Yes,” Meriwether said. “I smell it too.”

  In the thick air, rich with the stink of urine and rotting food, a new scent penetrated. Overheated iron, much like they had experienced in the workroom. They lapsed into silence. For ten long minutes, then fifteen, they walked through the dark and twisting tunnel, not even rats to disturb them. Then a sound reached them, deep and distant, like a roll of thunder that went on without end.

  The funk of hot metal was overwhelming, and a warmth had come to the air that neither man found comforting. The tunnel turned, and as they made their way around the bend, Meriwether lifted the barrel of one pistol. Balfour took his meaning and shuttered the lantern. There, far ahead, a faint red light shifted and skittered along the ground, as if trapped between the rails.

  “After it,” Meriwether said, and they were off. Bolting through the darkness, wood and iron making invisible obstacles around their feet, they quickly overtook the eerie light. By the unshuttered lantern, the mechanism looked like nothing so much as a great beetle. Six articulated copper arms propelled it along the earth at the speed of a brisk walk. Great pincers of steel extended before it, and a single lump of live coal burned within its back.

  Balfour and Meriwether watched as it tapped against one rail, then another, and then with a show of eerie strength, fit its pincers around a wooden tie and reduced it to toothpicks. Balfour drew his blade and with the grace of a master chef flicked the burning coal from its resting place. The scarab reacted with alarm, clicking its mandibles and charging madly about, then slowing, and at last coming to a clicking halt.

  Meriwether lifted the object. Already the metal was cooling. One copper leg twitched and went still. Balfour raised the lantern, looked ahead down the tunnel, and sighed. Meriwether followed his gaze.

  There, perhaps a hundred feet before them, the earth appeared to have given way. The iron rails lay bent and chewed, leading down awkwardly into a great pit. With a growing sense of vertigo, the two men advanced. What had been a breeze grew stronger, hotter, and more difficult to breathe. The roar which had been only a growing thunder became pandemonium. Below them, hollowed from the earth in the course of half a single night, a black cathedral had grown.

  Automata with wings of filigree spun in flocks, burning coals in their bellies like fireflies. Two great machines that had once been locomotive engines lurched and lumbered like black nightmares of Egypt, brutal faces chattering at one another in satanic chorus. A thousand or more of the insectile scarab-machines were at work, their jaws shaping metal and stone with the mindless fervor of termites constructing a hill. With a spee
d no human machinist could dream of, they arranged planks, strung wires, and formed gears. Meriwether saw one lift a dripping shard of half-melted glass from its back. And the object of their effort...

  No greater titan had ever walked the earth than the form now half-created in the London soil below them. Its blank eyes stood a yard across. Its teeth were great and shining blades. The body being formed from the clay and scrap metal of England by ungodly hands spoke of strength and complexity unmatched in human history or indeed the human mind. It was a destroyer of cities, of nations, of the human race, and the automata raced toward its completion.

  Balfour leaned close, shouting to be heard over the infernal symphony.

  “Flood the tunnels, then?”