Hearts of Smoke and Steam

by Andrew P. Mayer

  Using his momentum, Doc Dynamite managed to wrap his hand around the pistol, but Anubis was able to grab onto the cowboy's arm and use his weight to push it down.

  There was no doubt who was the stronger of the two men, and beyond sheer force, Anubis had youth and training on his side. But he was, in the end, still human. The punishment he had taken had more than evened the odds between them.

  Doc Dynamite was slowly lowering the gun toward him. Even though his life was at stake, Anubis seemed unable to stop it.

  As the barrel moved over Anubis's head, Doc Dynamite smiled. “Adios, amigo.”

  Sarah swam out of her haze and looked up to see that Emilio was holding her in his arms. She could vaguely recall that things were very bad, but if there was so much danger, how was it that she had fallen asleep?

  There was some kind of metal frame strapped to his legs. “What are you wearing?” she asked Emilio groggily.

  He looked at the suit and seemed to be almost as surprised as she was. “It is the Steamhammer. I wear it to help Vincent.”

  “Vincent is dead.” She was angry for herself for being so blunt, and then she remembered that her father was also dead. Sarah pushed the emotions away. There was still too much going on; grief would have to wait.

  As Sarah sat up, she saw the Colossus's head rise back up out of the pit. Somehow it still reminded her of Tom, but she would have been hard-pressed to admit that it was still him. Anubis had been right, she couldn't be sure just how much of the original remained…

  “Sarah? What's wrong?” Emilio said with concern. A limb extended from the side of the pit. It looked vaguely like an arm, but it was constructed out of mechanical rubble, built from animal parts and instruments. At the end of it, where there would normally be a hand, instead it had the head of one of Vincent's mechanical rhinos, its mouth stretched open impossibly wide. It hovered in the air, and Sarah realized that Anubis and Doc Dynamite were grappling underneath it.

  The cowboy had a pistol in his hand, and Anubis had pinned down his arm. For a moment, it was unclear who would win the battle, and then Doc Dynamite began to shift the gun toward Anubis.

  Sarah tried to will herself up off the floor, but Emilio held her down. “You must rest.”

  The gun had now lowered toward the center of the jackal mask. “Adios, amigo,” Doc Dynamite said, wearing the same evil grin that had crossed his lips just before he shot Vincent.

  Anubis let go and leaned back. “I'm at your mercy.”

  “I ain't got…” Too fast for vision, the Automaton's limb struck. The gun fired, but the rhino head had caught Doc Dynamite in its jaws, and it jerked him up into the air.

  The cowboy, kicking desperately, emptied the remaining bullets from his gun into the mechanical man's head, but they had no effect. “NOW I WILL…KILL YOU.” A blast of steam came from the Automaton's mouth as it spoke, the vapor shrouding the struggling man.

  “Let me go, freak!” Doc Dynamite threw the empty weapon at the creature. It bounced off the Automaton's metal head as harmlessly as the bullets had a moment before.

  Tom responded by lifting Doc Dynamite higher into the air. It held him there for a second, and then curled back, clearly intent on smashing him into the ground.

  “No!” yelled Sarah.

  “SARAH?” it boomed. The head turned to face her with a mechanical jerk.

  The cowboy had already started to pull out a stick of dynamite when the rhino handed him off to a curling tentacle that rose up from the pit. Doc Dynamite let out a scream as it looped tightly around him, and the unlit stick dropped harmlessly to the ground.

  She started to get clumsily to her feet. “No, Sarah!” Emilio told her. “You are hurt!”

  Sarah glared back at him. She understood the impulse, but she didn't have the time for it. “I'm not a damsel in distress, Emilio. You can either help me up or let me go.”

  Emilio lifted her to her feet.

  “Thank you.” She looked at him and gave him a quick kiss. “I'll be all right. Now get out of that ridiculous costume and tend to your sister. She's hurt and needs your help.”

  Sarah turned away and took a few steps closer to the pit. “Is that really you, Tom?” she said, looking up at the Colossus's face.

  “STAY…SAFE, SARAH.”

  She recognized the words now. They had been the last words that the Automaton had said to her at the doctor's doorstep. “I'm trying to, Tom. But I need you to put that man down first. He'll pay for his crimes, but you can't be his executioner.” She stepped up to him now, and the enormous metal face began to lower down toward hers. “Let us help you.”

  “HE WAS GOING TO…SHOOT YOU.” There was an unmistakable change in the timber of Tom's voice—something softer and more human— more like the Automaton that she remembered. It was as if he had been asleep and was beginning to wake up.

  “And you saved me, Tom.” She reached up to him. “You've saved me so many times.” She could feel tears in her eyes now. She had managed to hold them back since that day in the apartment, and now was not the time to start crying.

  “I'M SORRY…SARAH. I AM…DIFFERENT NOW.”

  “But you're back.” She reached out a hand to touch the tin face in front of her, and she wondered if Tom could actually feel anything through his metal skin. “Let me help you, Tom. You need to put the man down.”

  The head nodded, and the coiling limb dropped the cowboy onto the ground. He landed limply and didn't move.

  It was possible that he was already dead, but it was still better than having Tom fling his body across the theater.

  She knew that the Automaton had killed before. Darby had been a man of great personal warmth, but, like so many of the other men she had known, he was also capable of being utterly ruthless when the situation called for it. Tom had been the tool of that wrath on more than one occasion.

  The mechanical man had even been sent out to deal with various police actions from time to time, although whether he had ever acted directly against the populace was never spoken about in the papers, nor was it something Sir Dennis had been willing to discuss with her when she had asked him about it.

  But Tom had already been changing when he fell to Lord Eschaton. He had been on the verge of becoming more—what, exactly? Human seemed like the wrong word. Independent? Moral?

  Even so, Sarah had no way of knowing just how much of the Tom she had known still existed in his heart, and how much had been lost with the Alpha Element that Lord Eschaton had stolen away. Where did his soul lie?

  But whoever this creature was, it knew her name, and it had tried to protect her. That had to be enough for now.

  Men were dead, and Viola was hurt, possibly quite badly. And the Children would still be coming after her, and they still wanted Tom's heart. They needed to leave, and time was getting short.

  “Tom, can you free yourself from here? Can you come with us?”

  There was a sound of shrieking metal as limbs heaved. It tried a few times, then stopped. “PERHAPS. BUT IT WILL TAKE…TIME.”

  No doubt the police would be arriving soon, and the Paragons would come after that.

  Or would they? She turned to Anubis. “If my father is dead,” she said the words matter-of-factly, but it felt like someone was stabbing her in the heart, “what has happened to the Society of Paragons?”

  Anubis stood still for a moment before answering. “King Jupiter is in charge now.”

  That was a name she had never heard before. “And who is that?”

  Another long pause. “Lord Eschaton.”

  Sarah felt faint. “In charge of the Paragons?” And finally, like a dam bursting, the tears began flowing. She had wanted to be an adventurer so badly, but that world hadn't been full of death, deceit, and monsters. Why had her chance only come when the world had fallen apart? And how had it all fallen onto her shoulders?

  She had expected to begin sobbing, but the anticipated flood refused to come. She wiped the tears away and looked up. “Tom, you must fi
nd a way to move quickly! I still need you!”

  The head nodded, and then reared up. “I AM NOT ENTIRELY IN CONTROL OF…MYSELF.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I DO NOT KNOW.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I WANT TO…LIVE!” Her anguish felt like a knife wound in her stomach. Then she felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up, expecting to see Emilio, but instead it was the black mask of the jackal-faced man. “Tell him to give you his heart.”

  “What?” Sarah said.

  “If the Automaton can't move, then we take the part that matters and rebuild him.”

  “That's ridiculous.”

  Anubis moved closer to her. The Automaton reacted warily, but also didn't attack. “If the heart is what Eschaton wants, then you can be sure it's the only part that matters.”

  “And you won't steal it from me, Child of Eschaton?”

  “It is, as you said, not what I want.” His voice was weak and wavering, and he could barely stand up, but something about him still seemed strong.

  “What do you want?”

  “To stop Lord Eschaton, and to redeem myself.”

  Sarah nodded. “You can't do that all by yourself.”

  “Somebody told me that once, and I didn't listen.”

  Sarah turned back to Tom.

  “Tom…I…” Asking him to rip out his own heart was ridiculous. Wasn't that exactly what Lord Eschaton had done? Did the fact that she'd be asking him to do it to himself make it any better?

  “I TRUST YOU…SARAH STANTON.”

  “I'm sorry Tom, I don't…” but the rest of her words were cut off as the ground underneath them began to tremble.

  Sarah resisted the urge to scream as Tom's face collapsed, the sections of his head falling away to reveal nothing but metal and unspooling cable underneath. A moment later, most of it had disappeared down into the pit. It seemed Tom's entire body was disintegrating.

  A steel arm rose up and moved toward her. It stopped only a few feet away, and Sarah saw that at the end of it was the heart, framed by more cables, wires and cogs. It seemed out of place—the strict structure of Sir Dennis's handiwork, surrounded by a hodge-podge of metal, wet from the steam that hissed around it. And yet it seemed more truly alive than it had before.

  Sarah reached up and grabbed it, but it wouldn't budge. She turned to Anubis. “I'm going to need your help.”

  He nodded, and grasped the metal frame. They both began to tug, rocking it back and forth. Wires and hoses ripped away, and the sound of it reminded Sarah of a scream. Sarah could feel that there were more tears on her face, but she refused to acknowledge them as a sign of weakness. It was good to be human, and it was good to care.

  The heart tore free and Sarah turned it over, clutching it to her chest as she unscrewed the stopper that held the Alpha Element. She could feel the heart stop as she pulled it free. She put the unmoving mechanical organ on the floor, and slipped the glowing metal back into the key around her neck.

  “That's good work,” said a familiar drawl. “Now if you don't mind, I'd like you hand it over to me.”

  Sarah looked up at Doc Dynamite. He was holding a small stick of dynamite in one hand and a lit cigar in the other. He stared straight at her, and for an instant Sarah wondered just how many women a younger version of this cruel man had turned into roundheels just with his wicked smile and a wink from his gorgeous blue eyes.

  He lit the long fuse and held the explosive up in the air. “If I can't have it, we can all go together.”

  Sarah saw a black-clad foot appear between the cowboy's legs, and the man's usually squinting eyes went wide from the pain of the impact in his groin. Anubis plucked the dynamite from Doc Dynamite's hand, and pinched out the fuse between his gloved fingers.

  “Doctor Dynamite, I have judged you. You and the rest of the Children of Eschaton are condemned to destruction.”

  “I'll kill you for that, Wolf-Man,” choked out the cowboy, his hands cupped around his crotch.

  “I look forward to you trying.” Anubis smacked him hard in the jaw and the cowboy collapsed to the floor. “And I've been looking forward to that.”

  Sarah looked up at him. “You remind me of my father a little bit.”

  “You might not say that if you knew what was under this mask.”

  Sarah wondered what he meant. She was sure that she would accept him no matter how disfigured he was. “We want the same thing, you and I.”

  “Perhaps, Miss Stanton, although I think you may have better reasons.”

  “Maybe, but it isn't a contest.” She cocked her head and held out her hand. “Emilio has a junkyard, in Brooklyn—when you're ready.”

  He took it and gave it a shake. “All right. I'll find you, Sarah Stanton.”

  “And I expect that next time I'll see you, you'll show me your real face.”

  Anubis turned and ran up the aisle, then stopped and turned before he reached the back doors. “You have a good heart, and your father's spirit, but are you ready to fight a war?”

  “Lord Eschaton has hurt or killed almost everyone in the world that I ever cared about,” said Sarah as she clutched the heart to her chest. “I think I'm getting there.”

  “You still have a great deal more to lose,” he said.

  “Sarah!” Emilio was clearly in a panic. “Viola is hurt! Her face…is very bad.” His hands were red with his sister's blood.

  “I know a doctor, not too far from here. I think he can help her.”

  As she turned to help Emilio, Sarah heard the booming voice of Anubis filling the theater. “I have judged you, Sarah Stanton, and found you worthy!”

  “I'm glad someone thinks so,” she said quietly, and turned to go help Emilio.

  A first book is written in a kind of vacuum. It's you, a few close friends, and a lot of hopes and dreams.

  Second books, it seems, take a whole lot more people…Here's some of the people who helped make it happen.

  Thank you to:

  Ken Vollmer for reading the damn thing, giving me great feedback, and being my biggest fan!

  Kristene Markert, who paid a price and helped anyway.

  Joe Cangelosi for giving Emilio and Viola something to say in Italian.

  Lou Anders for believing in this whole crazy thing and giving it room to breathe.

  Justin Gerard for creating covers that I am not worthy of.

  Jay Lake for going above and beyond the call of duty for someone he barely knows. Thank you twice!

  Cherie Priest, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Gail Carriger for all being absolutely lovely in every way, and treating me like an equal before I really deserve it.

  Ken Levine for years of good advice and showing me that honesty and hard work are the best way. (Perhaps now that your name is in here, you'll read the damn thing.)

  Douglas Rushkoff for knowing it was what I should have done all those years ago.

  Andrew Fuller, who listened to everything I had to say, and helped me find a place to stumble into when it all went pear-shaped.

  Adrianne Ambrose, for being my favorite writing pen pal, and always there with a good word.

  Gabrielle Harbowy for catching one million mistakes, and making them elegantly disappear.

  Joan Bowlen, for showing up at just the right time.

  Peter Overstreet, for making me realize that steampunk time was here, and then telling me what year to set it in.

  And to everyone else who put me up, and put up with me while I wrote this thing:

  Bruce Scanlon & Kathy Guidi

  Kristina Nelson

  Peter Zimmerman

  Laurenn McCubbin

  Nicholas Stohlman

  Jay Goodman

  Mary Ray & Mike Zyraki

  ANDREW P. MAYER was born on the tiny island of Manhattan, and is still fascinated by its strange customs and simple ways.

  When he's not writing new stories, he works as a video game designer and digital entertainment consultant. Over the ye
ars he's been at work in the virtual mines, he has created numerous concepts, characters, and worlds, including the original Dogz and Catz digital pets.

  These days he resides in Oakland, California, although he's been travelling a lot lately. He currently spends way too much time on the computer, and not enough time playing his ukulele.

  You can find his musings on writing and media at www.andrewpmayer.com.