Steampunk Tales, Volume 1

by Ren Cummins

  From there, he drove through the warehouse district. The Nightwatch had several buildings in this area, but had had their most difficult time cleaning up blossoming crime groups who used the relative discretion allowed by the lack of residential proximity here. After that followed a storage and processing section, which from this side of the town led back towards the agricultural zone. He rode along the fields – open skies and verdant fields to his right, and the city and structures to his left with the Great Wall looking on from beyond.

  He eased off on the accelerator, bringing the machine to a gradual halt. It was still a bit of a wonder to see the great machines at work out in the fields, side by side with the agricultural guild members. Only a few years before, the most that people saw of the towering constructs were all but buried, in partial collapse around the fields where they had been abandoned so many years before. After he, Rom and Kari had rediscovered the all-but-forgotten Morrow Stones, however, the college of atmology, or steam magic, had relearned to incorporate the devices into the engines of the large machines. Some resembled humans with their long arms and legs, as they manipulated the smaller more box-shaped utilitarian ones. Kari had explained to him that these were interfacing machines, designed to bridge the gap between man and machine, and that their construction was meant to facilitate communication and cooperation in the production of food.

  One of the interfacing machines paused to look in Cousins’ direction. It stood more upright and raised one hand in salute to the young man. Aleph-five, Cousins realized. He had been the first of the old machines to be awakened, a fact which somehow seemed to have given the thing a bit of a personality. Though that might be debated – and was, in many of the chambers of the elder Atmologists – Cousins had noticed a distinct pattern of responses in that machine more than in the rest. And even Kari called him her tallest friend. Cousins smiled and waved back at the metal man. Who was he to argue with Kari about anything?

  A faint glimmer caught his eye behind Aleph-five – something in the lenses of the goggles themselves seemed to draw his attention out to the horizon. He lifted a hand to the lens controls and shifted them across the invisible spectrums these Looking Glasses had been inexplicably designed to perceive – images shifted and faded in and out of the lenses, most moving too quickly to make sense of.

  He’d identified a few of the dials on the Looking Glasses, as well as their accompanying characteristics. Some dials made the glasses reveal things as they were, some as things should be, some highlighted needs and weaknesses. One lens setting saw things as they would be. It was to this setting that he set the lenses and then slowly began to shift the filter. Before him, the world erupted into a flurry of activity, with individuals now only a blur of motion, unrecognizable by anything other than their relative shape and size. The machines, too, filled his eyes with scarcely opaque blurs of grey and black with occasional sparks of light as they methodically pressed past their routine.

  Something, however, caused him to stop and dial back the current filter – a streak of movement across the sky. Too big to be a bird or any other flying creature he’d ever seen – this was large and rounded – there! He froze the filter for a moment to look carefully at the object. He’d managed to just catch it for an instant of motion, and hesitated to adjust the dials further out of fear of not being able to find it again. It was moving fast – even frozen as it was, it was blurred at the edges. But it was clearly unlike anything he’d seen before.

  He pulled a small book from one of the runabout’s saddlebags, and, finding a spare mechanical pencil and a blank page, began to sketch it. He noticed, even as he watched it, it was still moving, so sketched as quickly as he could.

  It was long and rounded, with small fins on the back and a kind of carriage suspended beneath it. Not only was the carriage large enough to hold passengers, he could clearly see four people standing inside – though not clearly enough to make them out. One, oddly enough, seemed to turn and wave an arm in his general direction. He shivered in spite of the heat.

  Two wide fins extended towards the sides of the carriage, with small rotating wheels behind, two faint trails of steam shooting from each of them. He watched the unbelievable vehicle until it faded from his lenses, then removed them to view the settings. His forehead wrinkled. It wasn’t possible, he thought. By these calculations, what he had seen would happen in less than a week.

  He looked out towards the wild with his own eyes. Who are those people, he asked himself? And where were they going?

  Even without the lenses, his eyes continued to be drawn in that same direction. Something was definitely out there, he decided. Something important enough to risk breaking one of the few laws Aesirium still held over the people of Oldtown. And whoever those people were, they knew it, too. Cousins bit his lower lip. If it’s something someone wants, that means it’s valuable. Or dangerous. Or both.

  Cousins nodded. “It’s decided, then,” he said to himself. “I’m going. I just…” his voice trailed off. “I need a big flying…thing,” he frowned.

  He knew only one person capable of that sort of construction. And he wasn’t sure if she was still talking to him. He put the glasses back on, and tucked away the sketch. Waving to Aleph-Five, the large machine approached him.

  “Aleph!” Cousins called.

  “Yes, Master Cousins?” the machine answered. Cousins didn’t know why the machine insisted on such formalities, but he couldn’t say it was necessarily a bad thing.

  “I need to speak with Kari. Do you know where she is?”

  The machine inclined his head, which, due to its shape caused its mouth to momentarily resemble an upwardly curving smile. “I know where she always is, this time of day, sir.”

  “Her lab?” Cousins answered, swinging one leg back onto his bike. “Where else, of course.”

  “Of course, Master Cousins,” Aleph replied. “Will you be visiting her today? I would think she would appreciate your company.”

  Cousins nodded, but under his breath said, “I’ll let her know you thought so.” He waved again as a farewell to the tall machine and rode off in the direction of the college of Atmology. He never liked visiting Kari in her lab. There were too many things there she could throw at him.

  Chapter 8: Forbidden

  “Aaaaarrgh!” she yelled, trying to remind herself to take a deep breath before continuing. Hikari – Kari to her friends – was not having a good day. She’d already had a long and completely unresolved debate with two of the elder smiths about her theories on energy/steam productive ratios, had gotten to the cafeteria too late for breakfast and then come back to her lab to find that she’d not correctly sealed the gasket on one of her pressure tanks. As a result, it’d slowly leaked the high pressure steam all night and added a layer of condensation to her room that had inadvertently erased all the chalkboard equations she’d written the day before.

  She looked in the palms of her hands – the end bit of her small scale pneumatic wrench was twisted, useless. Kari yelled again, throwing the bit back across the room, sending it ricocheting behind a stack of steel plates. Something else out her view fell over, obviously struck by the thrown bit, which then scattered with a small clatter of rolling pieces of yet one more thing she’d have to clean up.

  She yelled a third time until her breath was gone, then dropped to the floor and slowly breathed it back in.

  This day could not get worse, she decided.

  “Is this a bad time, Kari?” came the familiar voice behind her.

  She covered her face with her hands. “Cousins,” she said, slowly getting back onto her feet. “Thank you, you just answered a question I had.”

  He took a step back, uncertain if he should just turn and run. Kari looked tired, there were dark smudges beneath her eyes, visible even through the naturally deep bronze of her skin.

  “No, come on in,” she waved. “You’re here, the damage is done.” She puffed a mouthful of air against a particularly annoying strand of hair, and
decided instead to release the strap at the back of her head and re-bind as much of her hair as she could gather. As usual, a few errant strands evaded her grasp, but she decided it was just a losing battle.

  Another piece of metal fell down in the general direction she’d thrown the wrench bit, sending another wave of noise and causing Cousins to jump nervously. “Ahh! What was that?”

  Kari forced herself to smile. In spite of the frustration, it was generally easier to smile when Cousins was around. “It’s nothing; just another… experiment.”

  “Oh?” His eyes crossed the room from the source of the noise to Kari’s desk and Kari herself. She waved off the question, so he didn’t push it.

  Instead, he walked a bit closer, asking, “Hey, you okay?”

  Her eyes softened for a moment, but her lips drew together in a straight line, and she spun back to look at something random on her desk. “I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Cousins’ mouth remained open for a moment, unable to choose his next words. It was always like this when talking to her. He could hold heated debates with anyone in this town, but even the simplest exchange with Kari, and he was completely out of his league. She just got him all….flustered.

  “Why are you here, Cousins?” she asked, her back still towards him.

  He cleared his throat, and walked closer, but slowly enough to give her time to collect herself.

  “Kari, what do you know about the land past the fields - - like, way out towards the mountains?”

  She turned around, the question clearly being far enough away from her expectations that her mood was instantly lifted. “What? Not much, really. People don’t really talk about that. It’s just where all the monsters live. Why?”

  Chewing slightly on his lower lip, he pulled out the sketchbook, flipping to the page he’d drawn on earlier. “I was riding past the fields this morning, and just…” he shrugged before continuing, “I felt like there was something out there – something I needed to see.”

  Kari pointed to the glasses that rested on top of his windblown hair. “Those?”

  He placed a confirming hand on the glasses. “Well, not at first, no. But then I looked through them and I saw… this.”

  She took the offered book and her eyes widened as she saw the image he’d drawn. With a soft gasp, she pointed at the picture. “You saw this? In the glasses?”

  “Yes.” He answered. “But it wasn’t actually there when I saw it, I saw it happen later.”

  “Later, like in the future?” When he nodded, Kari’s head mirrored the action.

  “Do you know what this is?” she asked him.

  Cousins shook his head. “Some kind of flying vehicle, as far as I could tell. I thought you might know.”

  The steamsmith chewed on her bottom lip. “I’ve seen pictures of it in some of the old restricted libraries. It’s called an airship.”

  “An air what?”

  “Ship. Airship,” she explained. “They used to make those for traveling on the water; it’s what they came to Aesirium on, before Aesirium was here.”

  “Have you shown this to anyone?” she demanded.

  He waved his hands defensively. “No, no, I came straight here. See that plume in the back? I think it’s steam. And those are people in the basket-thing.”

  Still holding the book, she dropped her hand to her side. “Yes, Cousins, I figured that. But…” She sighed dramatically, and lowered her voice. “Building these is against the law. It’s forbidden.”

  He blinked: this wasn’t the reaction he’d expected from her.

  She could see Cousins was still not convinced. “We aren’t allowed to build anything taller than the old clock tower, and that includes flying things.”

  “I know, it’s just… Well, it’s technically not taller…” he said, desperate for a loophole.

  “The law is the law,” she interrupted, tearing off the page and giving the book back to him. “They could arrest you for even drawing that, Cousins! It doesn’t matter how much family you have in this town, you could still end up in jail.” Crumpling the paper, she tossed it into her wastebin.

  “Perhaps, but I’m on the council, now. They wouldn’t treat one of their own like a criminal,” he said with a wink.

  “You should go, Junior Favo,” she said coldly, not really understanding why she said it. She couldn’t think right around him; some sort of combined sense of remembered guilt and the frustrated pang of loss. Around him, she felt like she was either all gears or all engine; either powered or directed, but never both at the same time. She walked to the far door and opened it for him. “Please.”

  The jab at his predecessor stung, but not as much as her anger. Cousins opened his mouth to protest, but he knew she was right. That, or he simply couldn’t think of the right argument to make in his defense. Why had he even come here? Did he really want her to break the law by building him an airship? Did the riddle of that mysterious crew of people really fascinate him so much, or had it just been a pretense? Either way, he reasoned, it was a moot point: the laws were very strict about what could be built:

  Build nothing half as high up as the Wall,

  Nothing to the waters which flow beneath us all;

  Nothing which could e’re undo the exile from our lands;

  Nothing whilst the colorless Wall stands.

  So had been passed down the initial verdict, but there had since been clarification upon clarification since the initial arrival.

  Cousins looked from Kari to the wastebin, then back at the notebook.

  “No, you’re right, Kari, I’m… I’m sorry.” He paused, tried to think of something else to say and, as usual, failed. He turned and walked out, closing the door behind him.

  Kari felt a gnawing in her stomach that was completely unrelated to having missed that morning’s breakfast. She looked at the door, wondering why she hoped it would open again to reveal Cousins standing there.

  Her eyes made their way back to the center of her large lab. It was mostly empty – she’d been assigned a lot of the machine reconstruction, but now that the machines could repair themselves, she’d had little to do but finish her classes and ponder her next big discovery.

  She sat back into the chair at her desk with a soft whoosh of a sigh. Kari just couldn’t focus anymore. Leaning back, she looked up at the large skylight above her lab, watching silently as a pair of clouds lazily moved inland. Her thoughts returned again to her friend Rom; wondered where she was, if she was okay, and struggled to unravel the question of why she’d left them here. She missed Rom. Even with all the teasing Rom gave Kari about her love of the scientific arts, it just wasn’t as much like she’d once imagined life, without her friend beside her.

  It didn’t matter if Rom really was a Reaper or a Harvester or whatever – in fact, that had at least given Rom a sense of purpose that she’d never had before. Even after Ian had died, they’d all been all right for a few months, but then she left and it all just fell apart. Kari had had her work to keep her busy, and Cousins had had his hands full with Favo’s old group. She hadn’t even gone to see Briseida and Goya at the apothecary shop in days – no, weeks. Kari frowned even deeper. She felt like one of the old machines, lifeless and rusted in the elements.

  Kari laughed quietly. What she needed was a Morrow Stone of her own – some kernel of energy that could make her move again. Some… her eyes flicked back to the wastebin.

  Reaching in, she pulled the paper out and, needlessly looking around the room, uncrumpled it and laid it out on her desk.

  “Energy,” she muttered. “How much energy would it take to lift a person off the ground?” she asked to the empty room. In response, she heard a soft melody form – a pair of notes at first, idly repeating in the back of her mind. Then a rhythm connected the two notes, followed by more notes, fleshing out the melody.

  As she listened to the music, she thought of additional notes that filled in the empty spaces, counterpoints to the primary melody, enhancing th
e rhythm. It rose in volume, swelled in its construction. A cycle developed, complete with sequences and alternating bridges. More voices emerged, developing out into tangential melody phrases, and altering the themes.

  The room brightened, as if responding to the music she heard in her mind; the sound seemed to coalesce around the sheets of metal on the far side of the room. She picked up her tool box and placed it beside the stack of metal plates. Slipping on her gloves, she adjusted the tiny dials to increase the relative strength of them, and began lifting the individual sheets, searching for the perfect one. Once found, she hummed the tune which had formed in her mind and sent the notes deeply into the particles of the metal. It vibrated in response, holding the key of the song ingrained in its core.

  A smile formed on her face as Kari’s magical song proceeded.

  Hours later, the other smiths in her wing smiled as they went home for the day, enjoying the familiar tones of little Kari, hard at work in her laboratory.

  * * * * *

  “Goya?”

  “Yes, dear,” the old shaman replied. It was such a warm afternoon; she’d been taking advantage of this old comfortable chair to watch the clouds slowly chasing the setting sun. She must have dozed, because now the sun was almost completely descended behind the western mountain range.

  “It’s time for your supper,” the lovely young woman said. Briseida had come to apprentice under Goya when she had just completed her college courses, and even now at an age where most women of Oldtown had either married or started well into their respective careers, Briseida had remained here to care for the aging wise-woman.