Defiant, She Advanced: Legends of Future Resistance

by George Donnelly, Editor

  In the stone skyscrapers of Shanghai’s Italianate and neo-classical skyline, windows glowed like rectangular unseeing eyes. Skywalks, slides, and lift tubes curled and looped above and around them. Dirigibles of rigid design flew at the highest levels above the city, while leather-stitched hot air balloons sailed against gray clouds with their coal burners blazing. In the lower level of the baskets below the balloons, lines of sweating coolies pedaled in unison to keep the rear propellers moving and the deep air rudder angling while wealthy Europeans drank tea and brandy on the upper level.

  A chugging tugboat pulled the Yellowsea Yank against the current of the Whangpu River from the Pacific Ocean. In the waning light, Kanlee saw the Union Jack and the Tricouleur painted on the biggest dirigibles, flaunting their colonial power. The Imperial Chinese flag, yellow with a blue dragon and red sun, and other designs were also visible.

  The sight made him ask himself, what was a lone, boot-strapped private detective and second-rate shortstop doing here? The answer, of course, was that when his father had been dying, he had told Kanlee that as his only surviving son, Kanlee must help his extended family if they needed him. So when he received Meiping’s letter, his duty was clear.

  Kanlee hoisted the strap of his brown satchel onto his shoulder.

  “Young fellow!” Captain Oxley walked up. “I spoke precipitously a while back. Hot-blooded from the attack, I suppose. Can you spare a moment?”

  “What for?” Kanlee asked.

  Crew members set up the gangplank leading down to a small tender that rolled on the waves.

  “I need to make a report about that ship, that monstrous thing. Come with me to the customs house and we’ll describe it together.”

  Kanlee had more immediate concerns. Without a word, he walked down the gangplank, dismissing Captain Oxley from his thoughts. The satchel was his only luggage, with another shirt, a few collars, and changes of underclothing and cash for the trip. Bootstrapping his confidence in this foreign land, he boarded the tender. The deck rocked wildly on the waves, but after a quick stumble, he found his sea legs for the short ride.

  His mid-length American haircut worried him some, given that the ruling Qing Dynasty, of Manchus who had conquered China several centuries ago, had made beheading the penalty for Chinamen not wearing a queue. However, he expected to be in the territorial concessions, where colonial law ruled. If the Manchurian authorities decided that the head of yours insincerely, Kanlee Kung, came under their jurisdiction, he would be alone with his Colt Bloodfinder. He could be as insincere as the Yellow Sea tide.

  The tender steered past junks with water-jet engines and short airfoil wings along their sides on the way to the stone jetty extending from the Bund. With other passengers, Kanlee walked along the gangplank to plant his feet on terra firma.

  “Ah ho, ah ho…” The chant in low, droning rhythm came from overhead, beyond the shouts of dockworkers and the cheery greetings of passengers. “Ah ho…”

  Kanlee looked up and stopped. “Hey, what the hell?”

  A hot-air balloon angled out of the twilight toward the middle of the jetty. The leather sagged. The coal burner’s fire had gone out. The upper level of the basket was empty, but a red-faced Brit foreman and four bare-chested coolies were in the lower level. The coolies chanted as they pedaled hard.

  The burly Brit, whose red toupee was slipping on his bald pate, sounded a brass horn powered by air escaping from the balloon. It gave a long, high-pitched tone followed by a short low burst. “Ya bastards, bring ’er in afore I kill ya’ll!” He raised a cat o’ nine tails and spun a clockwork arm with a rotating elbow to lash the crew.

  Outrage burned in Kanlee’s veins. He had never felt the lash himself, but he had heard stories all his life in Chinatown about white men’s raids and massacres of Chinese immigrants throughout the frontier. This moment made all the stories come alive again.

  Passengers who had disembarked ahead of Kanlee scattered, shouting and screaming, as the basket came down.

  The basket thumped onto the jetty with the propeller and rudder forcing the basket into a sideways angle. The collapsing balloon fell away from Kanlee.

  He found himself approaching the basket, drawn to see how the coolies had fared but worried about what he might see.

  “Arr, ya villains!” The British foreman stepped out of the basket. “Ya bloody bastards are lucky the master’s not aboard!”

  The exhausted coolies, drenched in sweat and bleeding from the lash, climbed out. They stumbled about, gasping for air and muttering to each other in Hoisanese.

  Kanlee knew that much of Shanghai’s laboring class came from the Hoisan district of Guangdong Province, where the desperately poor — including his cousin Meiping — often departed for Shanghai in search of work despite speaking Hoisanese instead of the Shanghai dialect. They came from the same origins as many of his father’s generation of Chinese immigrants to America.

  The foreman stepped up and lashed them again at random.

  “Stop it!” Kanlee quickened his stride, his anger flaring again in kinship with the coolies.

  “Yo, ho — a yeller bastard in white man’s clothes, is it?”

  “Shove it, limey.” Kanlee stepped between him and the coolies.

  “It’s that way, is it?” The foreman turned the spinning lash.

  Kanlee ducked away just as the lash sliced across the back of his head, stinging and sending him staggering forward.

  The foreman roared with laughter. “I’ll kill ya, ya yeller bilge rat!” He stomped closer with the lethal, whirling lash.

  Catching his bowler in his left hand, Kanlee yanked out the Colt with his right while spinning back toward the foreman. The gun blasted and the .45 slug hit the foreman dead center in the chest, throwing him off his feet. He landed hard and his red toupee fell off.

  The four Hoisanese coolies stared at Kanlee.

  He looked back at them for a long moment, the Colt Bloodfinder smoking. From their shocked expressions, he abruptly realized that with his American suit and haircut, they recognized no kinship with him. He turned and ran up the jetty, with shouts in English, Shanghainese, and French behind him.

  Blood red rickshaws waited on the Bund. The first driver in line straddled a two-wheeled engine chugging steam, with the long handles of the rickshaw braced to each side of the engine. He gave a fake grin and shouted in Hoisanese.

  Growing up, Kanlee spoke Hoisanese at home and picked up Cantonese from friends, but he jumped into the rickshaw and shouted the address of Lyman Wellstone’s home in Yank English.

  The rickshaw man put his machine in gear and took off. Kanlee looked back as the wheels of the rickshaw bumped on the cobblestones and bounced him in the seat. On the jetty, European men in suits, white women with brimmed hats, and wealthy Shanghai businessmen in long silk robes and braided queues were yelling and pointing at him.

  The rickshaw driver soon rolled down a tree-lined side street not far from the Bund. He came to a stop and hopped off. The shouts of peddlers and the puffing of their carts joined the chugging of other rickshaws moving up and down the block.

  Kanlee jumped to the ground, his satchel swinging and his head aching. Maybe he would donate his head to the Manchus after all.

  “Did anyone follow us?” Kanlee asked in Hoisanese.

  “No one. But you speak Hoisanese. You from Hoisan?”

  Kanlee shook his head. He studied the man for a moment and realized that while the coolies had been mistreated by the foreman, the rickshaw driver seemed to be in business for himself. Kanlee overpaid the driver, an acknowledgement that the rickshaw man had seen he was fleeing from others and got him away from the Bund.

  With a big grin, the driver trotted back to his rickshaw.

  Kanlee turned to the door in an eight-foot wooden wall that surrounded the Wellstone estate and tugged on the silken bell pull.

  In a moment, the door creaked open and a gray-haired Chinaman in a black cap and a long-sleeved, blue gown studied Kanl
ee. He would be the number one boy, in charge of the servants.

  Kanlee stayed with Hoisanese. “I am Kung Kanlee,” he said, giving his name in Chinese fashion. “Mr. Wellstone is expecting me.”

  “He never spoke your name to me.” The number one boy considered Kanlee’s Chinese descent, American suit, Hoisanese speech, and lack of a queue. “Go away.”

  From inside, a woman called out in English, with an upper crust British accent. “Ah Wing! Who is it, then?”

  “A Mr. Kung, missy,” Ah Wing said in English.

  “Let him in.”

  “Yes, missy.”

  Kanlee followed him to the front door, where he stepped inside and swept off his bowler. “I’m Kanlee Kung, from America.”

  “Welcome to our home, Mr. Kung. I’m Amanda Wellstone.” The young woman lowered her face demurely, displaying a large swirl of golden hair held up with black lacquered hairpins. Petite and curvaceous, she wore a low-cut blue bodice over a cinched waist and an ankle-length white skirt slit in the middle. Thigh-high tabs held the sides of the skirt open like theater curtains, showing off shapely legs above her pointed, black, high-button shoes. She glanced up with quick brown eyes. “Lyman is my brother. Come into the sitting room, won’t you?”

  “Of course.” Eyeing his sashaying hostess with appreciation, Kanlee followed her.

  As Kanlee entered, he heard Ah Wing close the door with a solid thump, shutting out sounds from the street. The house turned quiet except for Kanlee’s footsteps and those of Amanda. The floor in the sitting room was hardwood, polished to a mirror shine. On the opposite wall, a gaslamp threw a glow of light. A tall, lanky Brit with a bloodless face and thinning brown hair sprawled back in an embroidered wing chair. He wore a white linen smoking jacket over green pajamas.

  “Kanlee Kung. I got your letter and took ship right away.” He extended his hand to shake.

  “I never heard of you,” said Lyman Wellstone, ignoring the outstretched hand. He held a pipe made of an inch-thick bamboo stem more than a foot long and a bowl of ivory carved with the shapes of lotus blossoms. “I certainly never wrote you. Be gone, eh?”

  “It’s your name and address, sir.” Kanlee drew out the envelope and dropped it onto his host’s lap, ready to be insincere if necessary. “You even sent a bank draft to be drawn on account at the Bank of Shanghai when I arrived, to help defray expenses.”

  Amanda snatched up the envelope, slipped out the bank draft, and pushed it into Kanlee’s hand. “Perhaps I can be of help.”

  “You talk like a bloody Yank,” said Lyman, eyeing Kanlee.

  “Yeah, my dad went to California in the Gold Rush. He met my mother there and I was born in 1871.”

  “You arrived tonight and came straightaway?” Amanda asked.

  “That’s right. I sailed on the Yellowsea Yank.”

  Lyman waved his pipe dismissively. “Ta-ta, Yank Yank.”

  “That should come from me, don’t you think?” Amanda asked.

  Kanlee glanced at her, wondering what she would yank.

  “Something about that Fan fellow, I suppose?” Lyman asked. “Bloody pirate if you ask me.”

  “Fan fellow? This is about you, my cousin, and me.”

  “Are you still here?” Lyman narrowed his eyes at Kanlee.

  “Interesting look,” Kanlee said. “Makes you look more Chinese.”

  Lyman’s eyebrows rose in surprise, or maybe just to make his eyes look less Chinese.

  Amanda leaned close to Kanlee. “Your cousin Meiping is my handmaid.” She turned. “Ah Wing, bring Meiping.”

  Lyman closed his eyes, with his eyebrows still raised.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Kanlee whispered.

  “Lyman ships out opium for the E.D. Sassoon company. He inherited the family business from daddy dear. Now he partakes of opium himself. He just finished his evening smoke.”

  Ah Wing entered with Meiping, who wore a light blue servant’s gown and kept her hair in two looped braids. She had delicate, pretty features.

  She bowed to Amanda and then to Kanlee.

  “Do you know me?” Kanlee asked in Hoisanese.

  “Kung Kanlee,” Meiping said, giving his name in the Chinese manner. “I recognize you from a photograph your mama sent to my family a few years ago.” Her manner was formal, which was proper given the presence of the Wellstones. “Why are you here?”

  “I just asked myself that question,” Kanlee said. “How are you?”

  “I am fine, cousin.”

  “Take us to America,” Amanda whispered.

  Kanlee gave her a startled glance, then took the envelope from her and pulled out the letter. He examined the loops and curls of tidy English round hand. Lyman Wellstone had never heard of Kanlee and Meiping was fine. Kanlee compared the handwriting in the letter to the script on the bank draft and turned to Amanda. “You wrote these, and even forged your brother’s signature on the bank draft. Why?”

  “Take us both, won’t you? I got your address from Meiping when I learned she had a relative in America, you see?”

  Kanlee looked into her brown eyes for a long moment, then grabbed her blonde hair. When he yanked, it came free. Underneath, she had black hair pinned flat. “You’re Chinese.”

  Meiping watched them in apparent alarm.

  “‘Half-caste,’ as Lyman puts it.” Amanda took back her wig and tugged it on. “After Lyman’s mum died of consumption, daddy started screwing the help. That means my mum, who was Lyman’s amah. So here I am, you see? She died in childbirth and daddy felt too guilty to get rid of me — say, to sell me on Foochow Road. Since he died, my half-brother Lyman has tolerated my presence.”

  “So you pass for Brit.”

  “Take us to America. Away from this suffocating life I live and freeing Meiping from servitude in this home. We’ll go now, while Lyman’s asleep.”

  “What? You have wealth and standing in Shanghai—”

  “I have nothing!” Amanda yelled.

  “And you lied to me in your letter. Why should I help—”

  Awakened by the shout, Lyman grabbed a silken bell pull.

  Across the polished floor, a trapdoor crashed open.

  “The guards!” Amanda gasped.

  A mustachioed Gurkha soldier in a British Army uniform of rifle green rode up through the trapdoor on a whirring belt. He carried a handheld Enfield-Maxim machine gun with a hand crank, with the twelve-foot ammunition belt trailing. His eyes widened when he saw Kanlee.

  Ah Wing backed out of the sitting room.

  “Meiping!” Amanda grabbed Kanlee’s cousin and drew her down.

  Kanlee knew the notorious Enfield-Maxim machine gun by reputation. After observing that the great American Civil War battles were decided by infantry rifle fire, and not by artillery or cavalry, Hiram S. Maxim of America had teamed up with the Royal Small Arms factory of Britain. The result was the most lethal hand weapon to date.

  While Kanlee knew he could not beat an Enfield-Maxim with his Colt Bloodfinder, he knew how to slide into second base.

  Before the Gurkha started hand-cranking the weapon, Kanlee dropped his bowler and ran toward him with his satchel swinging on its strap. Kanlee threw himself forward feet first, with one leg extended like he was reaching for second base, and his other foot high like he was breaking up a double play. The blast of bullets passed over him. On the polished floor, he slid hard into the Gurkha’s legs, knocking him down, and kicked the Enfield-Maxim’s barrel upward.

  Kanlee scrambled up, grabbed the rifle by the barrel, and ripped it away. Then he angled it back and swung for the fences. The butt hit the Gurkha in the head and he collapsed.

  As Kanlee fumbled the Enfield-Maxim into position, he looked down into the floor opening. Jointed steel humanoid figures were riding up a conveyor belt. Their molded shapes included shaved foreheads, braided queues, and sightless eyes. “What the hell are those things?” Kanlee demanded, mystified.

  “The Vaucansons!” Amanda called out. “Vaucan
son automatons! They guard the opium tins in the cellar!”

  Kanlee had heard of such automatons, developed from the creations of inventor Jacques Vaucanson in the previous century, but he had never seen one. With a grimace, Kanlee cranked the Enfield-Maxim and, struggling to control the rumbling recoil, he shot the first Vaucanson. The bullets clanged off. Then Kanlee whirled to grab Meiping and run for the front door, but a second trap door crashed open, blocking the way. Another Vaucanson rose into view.

  “This way!” Amanda angled the gaslamp sconce on the wall and opened a hidden door. She pulled Meiping after her.

  In the wing chair, Lyman had drifted back to dreamland.

  Kanlee backed up, cranking the Enfield-Maxim. Two lines of steel Vaucansons were marching toward him, stiff and expressionless. The bullets sang off the Vaucansons in a metallic melody.

  When Kanlee stepped into the secret passage, Amanda pulled a lever and they rode another conveyor belt upward, powered by whirring wheels at the top and bottom.

  “What does your brother want those things for, anyhow?”

  “Clockwork automatons don’t use opium, you see? They don’t steal it and they can’t be bribed. The Gurkha knows how to wind them up.”

  The clanking, unseeing steel coolies came through the doorway below them and stepped onto the same belt Kanlee, Amanda, and Meiping were riding.

  “Where the hell are we going?” Kanlee demanded.

  “Well, really!” Amanda shouted. “Does it matter?”

  The Vaucansons with their molded eyes of solid steel rose after them, as the human trio moved up through the second story, to the ceiling where a trapdoor above them opened with a thump.

  Kanlee, Amanda, and Meiping stepped out onto a roof where the cool river breeze reached them. The roof was flat, covered with tar into which sand had been rolled to create a waterproof seal. Brick chimneys rose up at the corners and a metal stovepipe chimney stuck up near the middle.

  Kanlee aimed the Enfield-Maxim at the bolts holding the conveyor belt roller and cranked hard. The bullets blasted away the fittings. The belt dropped, taking the Vaucansons down into a huge crash of metal.