SteampubkPrime

by Mike Ashley

  We did not lose our faculties, or talk gibberish like the other sufferers, and we did not fail utterly in body as they did, and die; and for two days and nights we toiled almost without cessation to minister to them; toiled till we were giddy and almost dropped. At first we had the help of a few elder children who had not gone to the homes established for them. The lights did not attack the children, as I have said before.

  Few people came into the hospital after the first day, as most of those who were not attacked at the beginning had fled into the country, where I fear those who were attacked perished more miserably, no homes having been established for them. Two or three, however, came in singly, drawn by the triple light to its mate on someone with us. Two of our patients also left, beating their breasts, and saying that they must seek their stars — the “love-lights” some of the poor, demented sufferers called them.

  Those who remained with us — some sixty originally — were helplessly inert for long periods. At other times they gesticulated wildly and talked in the unknown tongue. La-Lu-Le, they kept crying, with the accent first on one syllable and then on the other, and in times varying from love to despair. La-Lu-Le!

  They had intervals of reason, but those grew fewer and shorter. After the first day they made no attempt to take food or drink, even in their rational moments, and they lost the power of their limbs and lay in long rows on the beds and couches. We worked unceasingly to minister to them. The supply of food grew short, and Phyllis and I went out and raided some of the shops that had been hurriedly left with the doors open, and we brought what we had found back in a baker’s barrow, that the two of us had scarcely strength to push. I have no words to describe the awful silence of the deserted houses and streets.

  The lights seemed to have more power to weaken us while we were separated from the doctor and Doris, and similarly they were more affected while we were absent. So we kept together in the evening. We were all too exhausted to say much. Phyllis and I sat hand-in-hand the others sat a little way apart, but they had ceased to quarrel

  “You have gained my great respect and admiration, Miss Fane,” the doctor told her, and she bowed and wiped her eyes.

  “I am glad that I shall die with a man,” she said.

  We had little sleep that night. Several of our patients died. Their stars grew larger and brighter and more substantial — they felt like a spot of mist if you touched them — and at the end they went off-together.

  The third day more died, and the rest were in a stupor. The air was fill of showers of lights that fell in a long rain of triangles. They were the outskirts of a dissolving world that was falling upon us, a shriveled old gentleman, who had escaped attack, declared. There was probably a more material core, he said, that would come soon. That would be the end of things. He was a scientist whom men had called great, he told us but his name did not matter. These things did not matter now. He went on slowly, leaning on his stick, towards Beckenham. Someone whom he loved had been buried there for thirty years, he told us, and the “love-lights” (he called them so) would be waiting for him on her grave, he hoped.

  More of our patients died in the afternoon. Phyllis and I went always arm in arm when we were not attending to them. The doctor and Doris kept away from us as much as possible because their ghostly masters struggled with ours, and they wished to save us from annoyance during these last sad hours.

  “You lucky people!” Doris said. “Don’t look like that, doctor! You and I are luckier than some. Let us do our work together, dear friend, and hope for the best.”

  “God bless you, dear, brave girl,” he said, and kissed her hand

  There were only twenty-two of our patients left at the close of the afternoon, and these did not understand anything that we said. Doris fainted from overwork, and Phyllis seemed in a sort of coma. The doctor and I had to feed them also. He and I were so weak that we could scarcely move, and, the four of us seemed bound closely together by the lights. He and Doris were unable to resist them any longer, and drew closer and closer together as they sat on the sofa, after she had revived from her faintness.

  “It isn’t my fault, Miss Fane,” he apologized. “I am sorry if it causes you annoyance.”

  “No,” she smiled up at him. “It doesn’t. I think it is near the end, doctor. I am glad to be with you.”

  He drew her head down on his shoulder. “It is near the end,” he said. “You will be more comfortable so.”

  We sat very still for half an hour. There was no sound except when the stars of those who had died fluttered by. We could hear them now. They seemed growing into substantial bodies, and we into unsubstantial spirits. Then gradually everything seemed to change. We found that we could move more freely, not that we were stronger, but because our bodies had less weight. The air seemed fill of something that we could not see, only feel; and it grew swiftly dark, an hour before sunset.

  “What is coming, Frank?” Phyllis asked, in an awed whisper.

  “The end of all things, dear,” I said. “I suppose it is the ‘core’ of the dead world coming upon us, as he said. We are together, dear. It has not been without its happiness, this sad time.”

  “No, dear. I have been with you.”

  The darkness grew suddenly darker, and looking out of the open window — we were in the long room where most of our remaining patients were — we saw a shapeless mass overhead, shutting out the sight of the sky; a bluish, ashy grey, with portions bulging out like low mountains, and black gaps between, where seas might have been. The Blue Books say it was from ninety to a hundred miles away; but it seemed almost to touch us then. Why it did not touch us quite even the Royal Commissioners do not know.

  The weight seemed now entirely gone from our limbs. I suppose because the attraction of the other world counterbalanced the attraction of gravity. There was no light, except the faint shine of the plague-lights on our breasts, and as we watched, holding our breath, these suddenly floated upward.

  “They have left us!” Phyllis cried. “The love-lights! Don’t love me any less.”

  “I shall always love you, Phyllis,” I assured her, “if there is no light left in the world.” But she fainted and did not hear me.

  I think I must have fainted too, for it felt as if time had passed when next I remembered anything. Through the window I saw the dark world still hurrying by, escorted by battalions of tiny twinkling lights. I could not see if they were still in triangles of three. They were — thank God! — Too far. In the room it was inky dark. A few of the patients, come to their senses, were calling in feeble, frightened voices to ask what had happened, and where they were.

  “The lights have gone,” the doctor was telling them. “I do not know what the darkness may bring. But we are in the Hands of God, dear friends — the hands of God!”

  It was the morning of the 19th of June when the sun shone again on the pale, enfeebled people who were left — humans, men and women as before. The Royal Commission has narrated in Appendices xxiv to xxxii how the work of the world was put together again, like a map that had been dissected for a puzzle. I only know the small happenings around me. We tottered about getting food and drink. Some who had met during the plague settled down where we were, and many who had parted went off to seek those they had lost. Children came down from their homes to find their parents, and parents went off to look for their children, and we smiled and wiped our eyes. Presently some went off to the churches and set the bells ringing, and all of us gathered there.

  We shuddered still as we looked after the black mass passing away in the sky above, drawing after it a misty aurora of light; the plague-lights that had invaded our earth, struggled with us, and slain; and failed after all. Henceforth we were left our own little world, and the world of each is small. Mine is larger than some for I am Phyllis’s and she is mine.

  Indeed I am tempted to say that ours is a world of four since the doctor and Doris and we are almost as inseparable as if we were still bound by our stars; but they struggle no
longer since the evil went.

  It was in a pause from our work of helping those who were feebler than ourselves that we understood this. We were sitting down together to the crusts and water that we had collected for lunch, and the doctor placed Doris a chair touching his.

  “You aren’t bound to sit beside me now,” he said, laughing cheerfully, and wiping his forehead with his handkerchief he had worked very hard among the sick. “You can order me to the opposite side of the table — or the world if you wish.”

  “But I can’t wish.” Doris said softly; and suddenly he put his hand under her chin and lifted up her face, and she looked up at him smilingly, and held gently to the sides of his coat. Phyllis and I took up our fragments of lunch, and went out in the garden and ate it under a tree. “God bless them,” I said, “and all on earth that live and love.”

  “Amen!”

  Phyllis put her arm through mine, and gazed where the dead world, with its trail of pale light, was growing dim afar.

  “Perhaps He sent them — the love-lights — to teach us to love. Who knows if they were a blessing, after all!”

  That is the lesson that we have learnt from the plague of lights. It is not included in the forty-three recommendations of the Royal Commission, and that is why I have written this story.

  WHAT THE RATS BROUGHT

  Ernest Favenc

  This story brings together two related period threads. One is world catastrophe, which we have already touched on. The other is the vampire. The fascination with the villain became popular in the late Victorian period almost certainly as a result of the Jack the Ripper murders in 1888. There were earlier popular villains, not least Dick Turpin, Spring-Heel’d Jack, Sweeney Todd and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Mr Hyde (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published in 1886, just before the Ripper murders). However the definitive villain-hero must surely be Count Dracula created by Bram Stoker in his 1897 novel Dracula.

  Whilst the following story features vampires, they’re not the dead-alive, but genuine vampire bats. Even so, the very mention of them as part of a world catastrophe has all the connotations of steampunk imagery.

  Ernest Favenc (1845-1908) was born in England but emigrated to Australia in 1864 and for some years worked on various cattle stations. He also took part in gold prospecting and became skilled at living off the land in the remote Australian interior. His abilities led to him being appointed as leader of an expedition in 1878 that explored the territory between Brisbane and Port Darwin to survey for the possibility of a railway link. After the expedition he married and settled down to a life as a writer and journalist. Several of his books are of science fiction interest including The Secret of the Australian Desert (1895) and the collections The Last of Six (1893) and Tales of the Austral Topics (1894). An expanded version of the latter book, edited by Cheryl Taylor with extensive notes on Favenc was published in 1997. — M.A.

  1

  IT was during the prolonged drought of 1919, just about Christmas time, that the steamer Niagara fell in with an apparently abandoned barquentine about fifty miles from Sydney.

  It was calm, fine weather; so, failing to get any response to their hail, the chief officer boarded her.

  He returned with the report that she was perfectly seaworthy and in good order, but no one could be found on the ship, living or dead.

  The captain went on board, and, being so close to port, he was thinking of putting some hands on her to bring her into Port Jackson, when a perusal of the barquentine’s log-book in the captain’s cabin made him hesitate.

  From the entries it appeared that the crew had sickened and died of some kind of malignant fever, the only survivors being three men — a passenger, one sailor, and the cook.

  The last entry, which was nearly three weeks old, stated that these three had provisioned a boat and intended leaving the vessel in order to make for Australia, as the only chance of saving their lives, as they felt sure that the vessel was infested with plague.

  The value of the barquentine and cargo being considerable, and the weather settled, the captain determined to take her into port.

  He put three volunteers on board to steer her, took her in tow, and brought her into Port Jackson, and anchored off the Quarantine Ground.

  On reporting the matter to the medical officer, he was ordered ‘to remain at anchor until it was decided what course to take.

  The season was very hot and unhealthy, and when the story spread it occasioned a slight scare amongst the citizens.

  Both vessels were quarantined, and the barquentine thoroughly examined.

  When it was found from the log that the deserted craft had sailed from an Indian port; where the plague that had so long devastated Southern Asia was then raging furiously, the consternation grew into a panic.

  It was determined to take the vessel to sea and burn her, for nothing less would pacify the public.

  The claim of the owners and the salvage claim for compensation were rated, and the Niagara towed the derelict out to sea, set fire to her, and then returned to undergo a term of quarantine.

  Nothing further occurred, and in due course the Niagara was released, and the people forgot the fright they had entertained.

  The drought reigned unbroken, and the heat continued to range higher than ever. Then, when the winter had passed, and the dry spring betokened the coming of another summer of drought and heat, a mortal sickness made its appearance in some of the low-lying suburbs of Sydney.

  When it had grown to an alarming extent, grim stories got to be bruited about, and a tale that one of the sailors of the Niagara had told was repeated.

  He was on watch the night before the vessel was to be destroyed, the two ships lying anchored pretty close together.

  It was about two o’clock when his attention was drawn to a peculiar noise on board the plague ship.

  He listened intently, and recognized the squealing of rats, and a low, pattering noise as though all the rats on the ship were gathering together.

  And so they were.

  By the light of the moon his quick eyes detected something moving on the cable. The rats were leaving the ship. Down the cable they went in what seemed to be an endless procession, into the water, and straight ashore they swam. They passed under the bow of the Niagara, and the sailor declared it seemed nearly half an hour before the last straggler swam past.

  He lost sight of them in the shadow of the shore, but he heard the curious subdued murmur they made for some time.

  The sailor little thought, as he watched this strange exodus from the doomed ship, that he had witnessed an invasion of Australia portending greater disaster than the entrance of a hostile fleet through the Heads.

  The horror of the tale was augmented by the fact that the suburbs afflicted were now haunted by numberless rats.

  People began to fly from the neighborhood, and soon some of the most populous districts were empty and deserted.

  This spread the evil, and before long plague was universal in the city, and the authorities and their medical advisers at their wits’ end to cope with and check the scourge.

  The following account is from the diary of one who passed unscathed through the affliction. Strange to say, none of the crew of the Niagara was attacked, nor was the boat with the three survivors ever heard of.

  2

  The weather is still unchanged.

  It seems as though a cloud would never appear in the sky again.

  Day after day the thermometer rises during the afternoon to 115 degrees in the shade, with unvarying regularity.

  No wind comes, save puffs of hot air, which penetrate everywhere.

  The Harbor is lifeless, and the water seems stagnant and rotting.

  And now, dead bodies are floating in what were once the clear sparkling waters of Port Jackson.

  Most of these are the corpses of unfortunates, stricken with plague-madness, who, in their delirium, plunge into the water, which has a fatal fascination for them.

&nb
sp; They float untouched, for it is reported, and I believe with truth, that the very sharks have deserted these tainted shores.

  The sanitary cordon once drawn around the city has long since been abandoned, for the plague now rages throughout the whole continent

  The very birds of the air seem to carry the infection far and wide.

  All steamers have stopped running, for they dare not leave port, in case of being disabled at sea by their crews sickening and dying.

  All the ports of the world are closed against Australian vessels.

  Ghastly stories are told of ships floating around our coasts, drifting hither and thither, manned only by the dead.

  Our sole communication with the outer world is by cable, and that even is uncertain, for some of the land operators have been found dead at the instruments.

  3

  The dead are now beginning to lie about the streets, for the fatigue-parties are overworked, and the cremation furnaces are not yet available.

  Yesterday I was in George Street, and saw three bodies lying in the Post Office Colonnade. Dogs were sniffing at them; and the horrible rats that now infest every place ran baldly about.

  There is no traffic but the death-carts, and the silence of the once noisy street is awful.

  The only places open for business are the bars; for many hold that alcohol is a safeguard against the plague, and drink to excess, only to die of heat-apoplexy.

  People who meet look curiously at each other to see if either bears the plague blotch on their face.

  Religious mania is common.

  The Salvation Army parades the streets praying and singing.

  The other day I saw, when kneeling in a circle, that two of them never rose again. They remained kneeling, smitten to death by the plague.

  The “captain” raised a cry of “Hallelujah! More souls for Jesus!” and then the whole crew, in their gaudy equipment, went marching down the echoing street, the big drum banging its loudest.