Hearts of Smoke and Steam

by Andrew P. Mayer

  When he opened them again, he saw that the bush had disappeared entirely. Only the stump remained, burning like a sad candle.

  King Jupiter put his hand back down at his side. “I hope that proves there is at least one way that I might be an asset to the mighty Paragons.”

  Grüsser clapped his hands together. “A lightning man! I have never seen der like.”

  “Nor I,” said Hughes. There was some enthusiasm in his voice, but it was hard to discern it from sarcasm in his tone. “You are a genuine marvel of the modern age.”

  Jupiter took a small bow. “Thank you very much.”

  Alexander looked down at the papers on his desk. “You've told us that the origin of your powers is related to your abilities, but your application doesn't mention where these miraculous powers have come from.”

  “No sir, it does not.”

  Nathaniel leaned forward now. “Would you care to enlighten us?”

  There was a grim smile on his face. “It's an interesting story, I'll admit, but not one I'm planning on revealing to anyone today.”

  Stanton stood before he spoke. “You do understand that, if you are allowed to join us, we will be trusting you with our very lives. Certainly you can see how important it will be for us to know everything possible about the abilities of our allies? We must determine how they can provide us with both strengths and weaknesses.”

  “Yes, I can see how you might think that I wish to keep secrets from you, but it's not that.” He coughed deeply to clear his throat. “It's simply that I have made promises to other men that I would not reveal their secrets. It is not myself that I'm protecting, but others who might be harmed.”

  “Hmmmph,” Hughes interjected. “That seems highly convenient to me.”

  “Oh, leave him alone,” Nathaniel said. “I'm sure that when it comes down to it, King Jupiter will tell us everything. You have all kept enough secrets from me.”

  “All right then,” the Industrialist said, flipping over a page. “Your skin is supposedly ‘impervious to most ordinary objects' and ‘much like stone.' That all sounds very good, but just how impervious are you?”

  “Am I impervious to bullets? Is that what you're asking?”

  Alexander looked up at him. “There's no need to keep trying to second-guess my meanings, King Jupiter. Just answering the questions as I ask them will be fine.”

  “I'm sorry, Industrialist, but it's a question I've pondered myself. Perhaps a practical demonstration would be in order. I would be honored if you would participate…” He held out his hand palm-up and then flipped it over to point at the open space nearby. “If you don't mind.”

  “Not at all,” Stanton replied, standing up.

  Nathaniel got a sudden queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He didn't like where this was going. As far as he was concerned, King Jupiter had been behaving as a perfect gentleman, and Alexander Stanton seemed intent on proving himself to be a perfect ass. “Is this necessary?”

  “Yes, I think it is.”

  “We'll need your weapons,” Jupiter informed him.

  The Industrialist's gun was slung over the back of his chair. Stanton picked it up and slid the harness on over his shoulders in a single, smooth motion.

  He walked out from behind the philosopher's table and faced off against King Jupiter. “I assume that this was what you had in mind?” he said, holding up his gun.

  Jupiter nodded as he began to open the buttons on the side of his costume, revealing more of the gray skin of his chest underneath.

  “These aren't normal bullets.”

  “I would hope not,” the gray man replied.

  “And I can select the strength of my shots, within reason.”

  “Then I ask you pick something rational.” The smile vanished from Jupiter's lips as he stared straight at Alexander. “As long as your goal is to test me, not to try to kill me.”

  “Quite right, sir.” Alexander lifted up a leather flap on his belt. Revealing a dial underneath of it, he twisted it to the left. When he was done, he raised up his gun and pointed it directly at the gray man. “Are you ready?”

  Nathaniel wanted to believe that King Jupiter had superhuman powers, but the idea that he could actually stop bullets with his flesh was utterly preposterous. But the man had suggested Stanton shoot at him…

  “Are you ready?” Alexander asked again. As much as he wanted to stop what was clearly about to be an execution, Nathaniel found himself so excited by the prospect that the other man could actually survive a close-range attack from the Industrialist's weapon that he couldn't bring himself to move or speak.

  For better or worse, the Paragons had, up until now, been primarily composed of men who used technology to augment their natural gifts. There had been a few villains with unexplainable abilities, and even heroes who claimed powers beyond mortal men, but if King Jupiter could do what he claimed, their world was about to change irrevocably.

  King Jupiter's head was bowed in concentration, and on his chest there was a circle of white that began to grow bright and larger.

  The Industrialist flexed his fingers and brought the gun to bear with a steady hand. “I asked if you're ready.”

  “Just another moment,” Jupiter said with the sound of strain in his voice.

  “You're either bulletproof or you aren't.”

  “Maybe…I just want…to give you a better…target,” he grunted through gritted teeth.

  “Alexander,” Hughes interjected, “I think that we've taken this quite far enough.”

  Stanton didn't turn his head as he spoke, his eyes remaining fixed on his target. “I'm grateful for your opinion, William, but while I'm still the leader of the Society of Paragons, I believe that the final decision rests in my hands.” A bead of sweat trickled out from underneath the Industrialist's mask and ran down his face.

  “Are you ready now?” the Industrialist asked again, louder this time.

  Nathaniel found himself swallowing hard as Jupiter looked up at them and lifted his right arm straight up into the air. His chest was pure white now, pulsing around the edges where it frayed off into lines of light. “Yes!”

  The gun fired with a crack and a puff of steam. An instant later there was an explosion of light that filled the courtyard as a bolt of lightning shot up toward the sky from King Jupiter's outstretched hand.

  This time Nathaniel hadn't closed his eyes quickly enough, and for a moment there was no color in the world, just a blinding contrast of pure white and the darkest black.

  As the echo died off, it left behind a stunned silence as everyone blinked away the images that had been painted onto their eyes.

  The quiet was broken by a rumbling sound that came up from King Jupiter's massive body. When it stopped, he dropped down to his knees as if someone had cut invisible strings holding his shoulders up. Slowly he brought his arms up over his head, and tipped forward onto the ground.

  Nathaniel half rose from his chair, but the Industrialist had covered the distance before he could finish getting up. The rumbling started again, and, clearly concerned, Stanton knelt down in front of him as the sound grew louder. “Are you all right, sir?”

  Jupiter lifted up his head to reveal a smile and the fact that the sound had been the beginnings of laughter. “Yes. Quite all right!”

  Alexander rose up and took a step back, as if King Jupiter's good humor was some kind of infectious disease. “Good God, man, I thought I'd killed you!”

  The gray man rose to his knees. “No,” he tried but failed to stifle his whoops. “I feel totally alive!” He exhaled heavily and wiped his brow.

  Finally getting his humor under control, King Jupiter continued, “I had a theory that I might be able to channel the energy of a bullet from movement into electricity.”

  “Wunderbar!” said Grüsser with a clap.

  “What are you talking about?” Alexander snapped.

  “Amazing!” Nathaniel said. “You hit him at point-blank range with a bullet, and he did
n't move an inch! All its power was transformed into lightning!”

  King Jupiter held his hand out toward Alexander. “The boy seems convinced, but what do you say? Will you let me join?”

  “I say,” Alexander sounded angry, and then he paused. Nathaniel knew just how stubborn he could be…

  Stanton took a moment to look at his fellow Paragons. “I can see that I'd be outvoted, no matter what I thought.” He reached out and lifted the man's hand up into the air, “So I say, welcome King Jupiter, the newest member of the Society of Paragons!”

  Emilio slouched down into the hard wooden seat, his thumbnail jammed between his front teeth. He was surrounded by dozens of people, but his gaze was fixed on a single spot on the linoleum floor in front of him where a piece of it had worn away. “Perchè qui?” he mumbled to himself.

  The only outward expression of his frustration was the rhythmic tapping of his foot on the floor. The tip of his leather shoe struck the ground precisely once per second, releasing a sharp snap that could be heard above the vibrations of the grinding of the ferry's steam engines as they chugged along, driving the massive ship across the East River.

  Emilio was still youthful in appearance, although some of his soft edges had been worn away over the last half decade of his life, leaving behind the hard edges of an older man. But age had done nothing to make him any less handsome. His features were classic in the European sense, but under his nose was a mustache that had been groomed upward into a modern pair of delicate curlicues that landed on either side of his rather generous nose. His eyes were tipped with heavy brows, clearly comfortable being knitted together in intense concentration as they were at this very moment, although the left one rose slightly higher, giving him an unintentional look of surprise. Not too far above them, Emilio's hair sat black and straight on his head, chopped and shaved on the sides, the front of it pomaded back to reveal his high forehead.

  His suit was made from brown worsted wool, well tailored, with the dark red vest brightened up by a incongruously sky-blue silk kerchief that stuck straight up from his pocket on a tower of starch.

  With every few beats of his foot, he garnered the attention of another of his fellow passengers. Occasionally one would glance up, his tapping breaking them out of their own trances. They grimaced at him with weary looks of annoyance and disapproval, some angry, but others looking almost grateful for anything unusual or interesting that might distract them from the dull journey.

  Emilio was a fellow traveler, but unlike most of them, the trip to and from Brooklyn was not one that he made every day, six days a week. The journey was still novel for him, although he had chosen to give his attention to the floor, and not the skyline that usually entranced the less regular passengers.

  If he was aware of the attention he was getting, then he chose to ignore it, squinting his eyes so that he could focus even more deeply on the tiles in front of him, noting to himself how the wood that had been revealed underneath the worn linoleum was splintering from the unseen forces that had driven so many feet to focus their steps on that single spot.

  After another half minute he began to suck on his thumb, alternating the “tick” of his shoe with a “titch” as his tongue rubbed against the nail.

  “Basta, Emilio!” a female voice exclaimed, accompanied by a jab to his ribs. He jerked up and out from his reverie; the quick movement caused the large round sack at his side to fall over, landing with a clatter and a thunk on the floor.

  Still dazed, Emilio turned to his sister. It seemed to take him a moment to recognize her, and then another to realize what it was that had just happened to him. When he had overcome the shock, he lifted up his hand and shook the back of his fist at her. “Calma, Viola!”

  “Calma to you as well,” she replied, slipping half into English, and spinning her hand back at him. “I've had more than enough of your brooding today,” she told him in Italian.

  “I'm not brooding.” Emilio reached down for the bag. “I hope you didn't break anything.”

  “Me?” the girl replied, curling her mouth into an outlandish sneer that could only hide half of her smile. “I only break hearts, Emilio.” Her lips, like the rest of her, were not so much large as luscious.

  Taken one by one, every piece of Viola seemed like it shouldn't work: her nose was aquiline but oversized, her eyebrows black and rough, and her hair was a shining red. She was too round in some places, and too flat in others. But the way everything came together created something so uniquely exotic that she seemed to be able to make men all around her blush simply from the way everything moved when she walked. Viola Armando was beautiful because she was constantly revealing herself to be more than just the sum of her parts.

  Even those few males who claimed that they were immune to her physical charms seemed unable to completely prove their lack of interest when she engaged them with her full attention. The only living man who could genuinely claim to find no lust in his heart for Viola's almost painfully quirky beauty was her brother, Emilio, and he proved it by jabbing the blade of his hand hard into her ribs.

  Viola gasped, squealed, and then jumped to the side, managing to shove her bottom into the man next to her. The codger let out a surprised harrumph from somewhere underneath his thick white whiskers.

  “Scuzi! Scuzi!” she replied, and shifted herself back, using the momentum of her hips to nudge her brother just a bit.

  Emilio shoved her back, sending her over into the old man's chair once more.

  After letting out another grunt, the white-haired man turned to look at her, mouth open to unleash a tirade. But the moment he saw her, he stopped, clearly thunderstruck. “That's all right my dear,” he mumbled by way of a reply, but having already apologized, Viola's attention had returned to her brother, whom she was berating in her native tongue.

  “What are you thinking about that you have to annoy everyone on this boat with your tapping?” She waited only a moment for a reply before poking his shoulder with two fingers. “Eh? Eh? Or do I have to ask?”

  “Why did you even make me go out there to see them? There was a line out the door, and I told you that they'd never talk to me.”

  “You said you wanted to be one of the Paragons. And they make money!”

  “They have money!” He sighed. “There were dozens of men waiting there, and they didn't want some foreigner, they wanted a hero.”

  “Foreigners can be heroes!”

  Emilio shook his head. “Maybe if you're English or German…”

  “Why are you always looking for the reasons why not, Emilio? You're smarter than any ten of those idiots that were standing in the room.”

  “But I have no costume, just this.” He tapped the bag next to him, and it let out a muffled clank in response.

  Viola sighed, then grabbed his arm and rested her head on his shoulder. “In America you can be anyone you want to be. You just have to show them that you're the smartest man in the world!”

  “You say that because you're my sister.”

  Viola tilted back her head and laughed, her curls falling back around her shoulders. As she glanced around the cabin, men's eyes darted back to their wives, or dived into their handkerchiefs and newspapers. “You know me better than that!”

  Emilio smiled and rolled his eyes. “Perhaps I do.”

  “Anyway,” she said, sliding her arm around his shoulders in a show of warmth that clearly made some of the people around them uncomfortable, “our money problems aren't as bad as you think, and if you did get that job, it would mean leaving me all alone in that junkyard all day.”

  “Ha! I'm sure by the end of the week you'd have charmed ten of our neighbors into building a whole new house for you.”

  “I don't know what you're talking about,” Viola replied, batting her eyelashes with a look of mock innocence. “And anyway, I'm thinking that it isn't only the Paragons that have you feeling sorry for yourself.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” He tried to keep his tone light, but the darkne
ss in his mind felt like the beginning of a storm that had already begun to pull in memories best left forgotten.

  “It's been many years now, Emilio. If you could let yourself move on it wouldn't mean that you loved them any less.”

  He turned away from her and stared out through the dirt-smeared windows behind him. Outside, New York was sliding by, the buildings clearly outlined in the yellow light of the late-afternoon sun. “I don't like the way this city looks.”

  “We've come a long way from Tuscany, brother.”

  “Too far, I think.”

  “There's no going back now.”

  “Not for me anyway.”

  Viola frowned, then jumped up from her seat, spun around, and took his hand. “Come on, Emilio. Let's go look at the engines. You can tell me all about how poorly made they are.”

  He stood up and grabbed the round sack by the two thick leather handles along the top. “Which only shows you never listen to me! Those engines are beautiful, it's the lack of maintenance! Americans always build amazing machines, then hand them over to inattentive barbarians who let them rot. It's a wonder anything in this country still runs at all.”

  Now it was her turn to roll her eyes. “That's because Americans have better things to do than fall in love with hunks of metal.”

  “America invents everything and cares for nothing!” he replied defensively, and fell back into his seat. “The world is doomed!”

  “You're doomed to be an idiot.” She started to pull him up and off the chair. “What would fix you is a woman—someone pretty who can listen to your horrible whining so that your sister can get on with her life.”

  “I'm protecting the world from you!” But Emilio had already relented, and he allowed himself to be dragged along behind his sister, a smile on his face. Going down to the engine room might not be such a bad idea after all.

  On the other side of the cabin, his eyes landed on a sight that took his thoughts away from machines entirely.

  Most people on the boat wouldn't have bothered to notice the young lady. She was wearing an unassuming shopkeeper's dress, and a simple black hat covered most of her hair, but Emilio could see that a few blonde ringlets had slipped free from underneath of it. To him they spoke of a mystery that he would love to solve.