Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded

by Jeff VanderMeer

  None of the voices was shouting, at first; they were all speaking in a conversational tone, as if they did not realize how much competition there was to be heard. As the minutes went by, however, this intelligence seemed to filter back to wherever the dead were lodged. The voices were raised a little—and then more than a little. Fortunately, the volume of their clamor was limited by the power of the amplifiers that Mr. Edison had fitted to his machine, and he immediately reached out to turn the knob that would quiet the chorus—with the result that the voices of the dead became a mere murmurous blur, denied all insistency as well as all coherency.

  Edison’s own voice was clearly audible over the muted hubbub when he turned to his audience to say: “If you will be patient, gentlemen, I am certain that our friends on the Other Side will begin to sort themselves out, and make arrangements to address us by turns, in order that each of them might make himself heard. It is just a matter...?”

  He was interrupted then, by an unexpected event.

  Allan Quatermain, who happened to be looking out of one of the portholes, observed four bolts of lightning descend simultaneously from widely disparate parts of the sky, converging upon the funnels of the Titan. All four struck at the same instant, each one picking out a funnel with unerring accuracy. . . . The lightning surged through the hull, possessing every fiber of the vessel’s being.

  The Titan’s wiring burnt out within a fraction of a second and Mr. Edison’s machine collapsed in a heap of slag, although it left the man himself miraculously untouched, perched upon his stool. So diffuse was the shock, in fact, that the men standing in the saloon, their womenfolk in their cabins, and even the masses huddled in steerage felt nothing more than a tingling in their nerves, more stimulant than injury.

  Allan Quatermain as depicted by Thure de Thulstrup.

  Nobody aboard the Titan died as a direct result of the multiple lightning strikes, but the flood of electrical energy was by no means inconsequential. Communication between the Titan and the world of the dead was cut off almost instantly—but almost instantly was still a measurable time, and the interval was enough to permit a considerable effect.

  Exactly what that effect was, no one aboard the Titan could accurately discern, and the only man aboard with wit enough even to form a hypothesis was Jean Ténèbre, who had briefly borrowed the identity of the elephant-hunter Allan Quatermain.

  If the real Quatermain had made any posthumous protest, his voice went unheard.

  What the Chevalier Ténèbre hypothesized was that by far the greater portion of the power of the multiple lightning strike, which had so conspicuously failed to blast the Titan to smithereens or strike dead its crew and passengers, had actually passed through the ship’s telegraph system and Mr. Edison’s machine into the realm of the dead, where it had wreaked havoc.

  What the realm of the dead might be, or where it might be located, the chevalier had no idea—but he supposed that its fabric must be delicate and that the souls of the dead must be electrical phenomena of a far gentler kind than the lightning of Atlantic storms.

  Thomas Edison had presumably been correct to dispute William Randolph Hearst’s claim that Edison’s machine might only enable the Titan’s passengers to hear the screams of the damned in Hell—but if the souls of dead humankind had not been in Hell when Edison closed his master-switch, they obtained a taste of it now.

  And they screamed.

  They screamed inaudibly, for the most part, because the pipes of Edison’s machines had melted and their connections had been dissolved—but there was one exception to this rule.

  The brothers Ténèbre and Count Lugard’s party were not the only individuals on board the Titan who might have been classified as “undead.” The fragment of the creature that had washed up on the beach at Nettlestone Point, having earlier been found by a fishing-vessel off Madeira and lost again from the Dunwich, also had an exotic kind of life left in it. Like many supposedly primitive invertebrates, the part was capable of reproducing the whole, under the right existential conditions and with the appropriate energy intake.

  When this seemingly dead creature screamed, its scream had only to wait for a few microseconds before it was translated back from the fragile realm of the dead into the robust land of the living.

  It was a strange scream, more sibilant than strident, and it was a strangely powerful scream.

  As Edison’s machine had briefly demonstrated—confounding all the skeptics who had refused for centuries to believe in spiritualists and necromancers, ghostly visitations and revelatory dreams—the boundary between the human and astral planes was not unbreachable. When the unnamable creature, whose close kin had died by lightning in the Mitumba mountains, was resurrected by lightning, its scream tore a breach in that boundary, opening a way between the worlds—and through that breach, the newly agonized souls of the human dead poured in an unimaginable and irresistible cataract.

  FIG. 6 – This fragment of a letter from Mary Lewis writing to Eudamien Fontenrose contains further, independent evidence of S.’s involvement in the events at the house. Unless, of course, Lewis were in league with S., and thus this evidence is presented to throw me off the scent of some still greater mystery. It also provides more information on the “two brains” references. Most importantly, this fragment is the only existing eyewitness account of the trial-run of the Mecha-Ostrich before its tragic destruction.

  13th August 18—

  Eudamien,

  Would that I could still write “My dearest,” but both you and I know full well what you have done to lose my regard. What I told you, Eudamien, was meant in strictest confidence. My artist’s fears and insecurities were exposed to you in good faith, and in good friendship. My greatest distress is reserved for my poor Shelley, who has contributed in no manner to this situation, and yet has suffered almost as greatly as I; firstly in her avid anticipation of your review of our Art, and then in her terrible despair upon reading the mendacities your execrable scribbling have heaped upon our life’s oeuvre. Your terrible mocking of our joint desire to create works that are both beautiful and practical was not merely petty, but also inexcusably cruel.

  I can only be grateful that you did not reveal our secret to the entire world. Here in Delaware, in our sanctum sanctorum, we are at home. We are amongst friends—the family we have chosen for ourselves. We are not accustomed to being subjected to the ridicule and opprobrium we would otherwise garner should our malady be discovered by the broader community. We are but victims of a dreadful accident, not entirely of our causing, and the only saving grace, which allows us to continue to exist, is the Cerebral Exchange Compressor, built by my father before his untimely death. In sharing a Brain, one day each, and being able to maintain our own memories and privacy from each other, we preserve each of us a modicum of a normal life. You do not know how difficult it is to communicate with one’s best friend and dearest soul, only via the medium of letters and notes left for one another; letters and notes and the pieces of clockwork mechanic-erie which we create and leave each for the other to incorporate into our Art. You cannot conceive, Eudamien, what you have done—you have impugned not only our Art, but our fundamental means of communication.

  Since your ill-considered criticism, Eudamien, things in our little corner of Delaware have not been quite right. I know you truly believe that the world is ruled and governed by opinion, but you seem unaware or uncaring of the consequences of airing yours.

  Our neighbors have become a source of constant concern to me. Shelley does not seem to share my worry, although her main discomfort of late falls at the feet of Mr. ——, who has displayed a rather prurient interest in her. I, on the other hand, may simply see more clearly because of the unconventional hours I am accustomed to keeping. It has been my custom, these past years at the colony, to take an evening stroll, but in recent weeks I have been troubled by a sensation of being...observed; watched by elements unseen and nefarious. As you are well aware, there can be mists around these parts,
the river being not so very far away from our settlement. I am a creature of habit and prefer to walk the boundary line between the colony and the land of Mr. and Mrs. ——, but lately...there have been strangers—

  Or, rather, things that at once appear human and, at the same time, somehow incorrect—they fade from view faster than any mortal should; they move too quickly to be quite... right. I know PQ has acted in the position of guardian for our colony for some time now, but in these latter days I begin to fear that protection may be more dangerous than any threat offered by the outside world.

  Why, three nights ago I walked along the hedgerow separating our two lands —there was a most tremendous clanking sound, something I have never associated with the steam art Shelley and I have made our joint life’s work; a most terrible grinding like something gnashing its teeth. I froze and waited—for agonizing minutes, it seemed, but good sense tells me it was not more than a few seconds. This thing loomed at me out of the mist and over the hedge, a dreadful specter a full thirty feet in the air, making an awful racket as if to devour me and anything else in its path. Eudamien, I ran...(and we two have known each other long enough for you to recall I do not indulge willingly in such physical exertion).

  I threw a single glance over my shoulder as I fled and recognized the thing for what it was—a gigantic metal bird, an ostrich to be precise, black-winged with metallic limbs and steam puffing from its nether parts like a veritable rent torn in the fabric of Hell itself. The contraption was a hideous symphony in wire and steel, hardwood and aluminium. I did not slow my flight, but merely returned to our little cottage shaking like a leaf. I fear Shelley did not receive too excellent a start to her shift, but rather wondered why she felt so nervous and frail upon taking solitary possession of our Brain. Perhaps I should have left her a note, but my hands shook so violently that I couldn’t muster the energy to hold the pen. Even now, knowing what it was, that it is nothing truly worse than anything Shelley and I have created over the years, I can no longer bring myself to go out once afternoon borders on its sister, the night.

  I fear, I fear, I fear

  [fragment ends here]

  After a while I detected a smell of smoke, which it seemed to me must be a sign of civilization. I imagined perhaps a little woodcutter’s hut, as in an old-fashioned fairy-tale—though the noise of clanking & clattering that grew around me as I approached was not such as I could imagine any woodcutter making—and what I found was not old-fashioned at all, but rather the beady red eye of the Future, glaring at me—but I get ahead of myself.

  The woods parted. There was a green & rolling hill. There was a house, & around it a yard with a white fence. The noise had ceased—all was quiet & still. Thinking perhaps to beg for food I looked for a gate.

  It was a tall fence—rather taller than I. Over the top of it poked a long stem of metal, which at first I took to be a chimney, or stovepipe. Only slowly did the peculiarity of its shape strike me—the slight spinal curve of the shaft, & that sideways sharpness that can only be described, albeit redundantly, as beak-like, & those two apertures, from which steam puffed gently, which one has little choice but to call nostrils, & then—as I pulled myself up to peer over the fence—the red eye that opened!

  The lid of that eye was steel, and it opened with a sound like the loading of a revolver. The eye revealed beneath was red as a burning coal. Gentle nostril-puffs of steam became fierce jets. The whole flat metal head lurched, the long shaft of the neck below creaked & clanked, snapped & jerked. I fell.

  On my hands & knees I pressed my eye to a crack in the fence, in time to see the thing turn tail and run—& what a magnificent tail!—a fan, a knot, not of feathers but of solid gleaming brass, like the shield of a Spartan!—& rising & falling two wings of good strong battleship steel!—& what legs! Silver and mahogany, rather like two Winchester rifles!—& the telescoping of its neck—& oh, the pistons on its back, up & down & in & out the pistons! Ostrich! Ostrich! —for such a bird it was, yet also—

  Understand: I do not speak metaphorically. I shall never speak metaphorically again. When I say that bird was made of brass and battleship steel, I mean precisely that. If I say gears I mean gears, & if I say rivets, then rivets, damn it.

  Kicking high its legs & swaying mightily from side to side & pouring steam from each of its many vents it began to run, around & around the edges of that little yard. At each step its feet sank in the earth, for there had been rain overnight, & it cannot have weighed less than a grand piano—yet it was indefatigable. Always it seemed it might topple—always it righted itself. The noise was deafening & the heat & steam like that of an African jungle. The wings, I swiftly intuited, worked to fan steam from its delicate internal workings, which might otherwise rust—for like its primitive savannah forbear, that splendid machine was flightless.

  If the word opium enters your head it reflects poorly on your lack of charity & imagination. Besides it has been devilishly difficult to acquire opium out here in the sticks, as no doubt you knew it would be, damn you.

  A vision came to me: one day the streets of New York will throng with these creatures, as men ride to work & women to their appointments on mechanical-ostrichback. & then a further vision: one day the Great Powers of Europe will settle their conflicts with ostrich-mounted riflemen, faster than any cavalry—imagine what mischief the Kaiser might do with a thousand head of mecha-ostrich! & then—

  A man stood watching in the window of the house, as around & around his creation ran. I did not, I could not, approach him—not because I was afraid but because I was not worthy—one might as well interrupt God at work in his Garden.

  Next to this triumph of Engineering, how trivial are the accomplishments of Art! Down all the weary centuries since first Homer sang, what have we artists created to compare—to this splendor, this terror! Nothing.

  The ostrich lurched to a halt, not three feet from my hiding place. Its wings drooped & its pistons ceased. With one last great grinding of gears it lowered its head & drove it into the earth, as if to command, by example: SILENCE. & there it remained, dear children.

  THE FLYING MACHINE OF THE FUTURE WILL PROBABLY BE BASED UPON THE STRUCTURE OF A FLYING BIRD, THE LOUVRES IN THE WINGS CORRESPONDING TO THE ACTION OF THE BIRD’S FEATHERS.

  Artemisia Absinthe

  “ARTEMISIA’S ABSINTHE”: From the time Anyushka Rutkauska was a young girl, chemistry was all she could think of. While it was difficult for girls to pursue such professions in Poland in those days, it was not impossible, and Anyushka was finishing up her PhD at the University of Warsaw when rumors of the war began bubbling out of lecture halls and cafés like a laboratory concoction gone awry. Perhaps she was prescient, or maybe just restless, but she packed her bags and took off for Paris the day she passed her oral exams. At the time she certainly regretted the decision, as her freshly minted diploma did not translate into French easily, or truth be told, at all. That is how Anyushka found herself tending bar at the Taverne Coeur Noir in the 6th Arrondissement. Despite what she told the proprietor, she had no experience with tending bar, but for a chemist, how difficult could it be? Certainly easier than pronouncing “Anyushka” in French—patrons simply dubbed her “Artemisia” after the potent wormwood-tinged cocktails that were the ruin of many a Coeur Noir customer. Indeed, it became a badly kept secret that Artemisia’s cocktails were the best in the City of Lights, and artists, courtesans, poets, academics, and diplomats began to pour into the cramped little bar to sample her potent concoctions. The cocktails proved to be great equalizers, rendering the rogue as well as the statesman a blissful yet blithering mess by the end of the evening. Inevitably, a bombast of German soldiers blundered in, rude and imperious, and with a hard, cold glitter in her heavily kohl-rimmed eyes, Anyushka cooked up something very, very special for the lot of them. No sudden deaths, no, nothing as obvious as that. Permanent impotence, total hair loss, an unshakeable sense of dread, irretrievable madness, the firm conviction that one was really a woman—these we
re the subtle gifts Anyushka’s cocktails imparted to the German occupiers. Where no finger could be pointed, no credit could be given, either. Nonetheless, Artemisia was awarded a Medal of Honor at the end of the war, enjoying heroine status, and best of all, an appointment to the chemistry department at the Sorbonne. Art & text by Ramona Szczerba.

  Which is Mightier, the pen or the parasol?

  Gail Carriger

  I’M A STEAMPUNK author and I have a shameful confession to make. Long before I discovered Moorcock, when I still thought Jules Verne was destined to remain safely trapped away in the 1800s forever, I wore steampunk. I proudly donned my Victorian silk blouses and little tweed jodhpurs. I twirled my bug-in-resin necklace and clacked about in buckle-topped riding boots. I didn’t know there was steampunk to read, I only thought there was steampunk to wear. Finding out about steampunk literature for the first time was a complete revelation. “You can do that?” I thought. “You can marry a love of dressing the past with a love of writing a new version of it?” You could have knocked me down with an aetherogram.