Defiant, She Advanced: Legends of Future Resistance

by George Donnelly, Editor

  “Now where do we go?” Kanlee asked.

  “I have no idea,” said Amanda.

  “No idea,” Kanlee muttered. He eyed the ammunition belt, which had only about five feet of rounds left.

  Meiping looked around helplessly, tossing her looped braids.

  A trap door banged open across the roof. Another Vaucanson rose into view, staring with dull metal eyes as insincere as Kanlee’s own.

  Kanlee glanced around the edges of the roof. No tree branches were close enough for them to reach. When he looked straight down, he saw that the wall was sheer, with no window casings or exterior pipes that could be used to climb down.

  The first shining, expressionless Vaucanson from the rooftop trapdoor came marching toward them, followed by others. The roof quivered under the tramp of their steel feet.

  Kanlee fired the Enfield-Maxim again, but as before, the bullets glanced off the oncoming Vaucansons.

  Kanlee directed Meiping and Amanda behind him to a corner near a chimney, where they watched the Vaucansons advance.

  “What can we do?” Amanda wailed.

  “How do they find us?” Kanlee demanded.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Those steel eyes can’t see. Maybe the Vaucansons got wound up and released, but they change directions to follow us. How do they know where we are?”

  “Only the Gurkha knows, and a couple of his colleagues.”

  “Amanda, they can locate us somehow.”

  She just shook her head and watched the Vaucansons clank toward them.

  Mechanical, Kanlee thought to himself. Clockwork. Wind-up. Tick tock.

  They had no sight, no hearing.

  Tick tock. They kept coming.

  As Kanlee watched their feet stomping forward, he remembered the hum of the Yellowsea Yank under his feet. He recalled having to find his footing as the tender rolled on the waves and the way the wheels of the rickshaw had rattled him as he rode down the street. The conveyor belt to the roof had rolled with whirring wheels. He had arrived with engines, waves, and rollers.

  The Vaucansons kept walking.

  Kanlee felt the roof vibrate as they marched.

  Tick tock.

  “Don’t move,” Kanlee whispered in English to Amanda and then in Hoisanese to Meiping.

  Kanlee stood motionless with Amanda and Meiping on their corner of the roof, but the Vaucansons were still coming toward them. “No talking, either,” he whispered.

  “Then shut up,” Amanda whispered back.

  Watching the Vaucansons close the distance across the roof, Kanlee pulled the ammunition belt loose and took the Enfield-Maxim by the barrel. He stepped ahead of the two young women to make room for his backswing. With a sidewinder throw, he flicked the Enfield-Maxim in a horizontal, spinning motion like the business end of a broken bat spinning away from the hitter.

  The whizzing Enfield-Maxim struck the side of the lead Vaucanson’s knee, clanged off, and spun into the leg of the next Vaucanson following. The first Vaucanson stopped, diverted by the banging under its feet. The second one in line also halted, bending forward as though it could somehow perceive through its unseeing eyes to find the source of motion.

  Both Vaucansons stepped onto the Enfield-Maxim as it settled on the roof with a slight rolling motion, and the next Vaucansons also clanked after it, crashing into the ones ahead. With their sightless eyes and unhearing ears, the followers in the line kept moving forward into the group, crashing into each other, stumbling, some falling. The big jumble grew wider, trapping this little corner of the roof, but at least the Vaucansons were no longer advancing.

  “That was it,” Kanlee whispered. “It must be built into their clockwork balance. “They’re designed — and wound-up — to follow movement through their feet and legs.”

  “How do we get around them?” Meiping asked.

  “Kanlee, listen,” said Amanda.

  He heard voices above him in the wind.

  “Ah ho! Ah ho!” The chant of Hoisanese laborers reached Kanlee from a big basket over his head. They were the four coolies who had seen Kanlee shoot their foreman. A new fire blazed in the coal burner, heating the balloon above them. The brass horn gave its long, high-pitched tone followed by the short low burst.

  One coolie threw out a rope ladder. “The rickshaw man told us you were Hoisanese — and you might need help.”

  Kanlee grasped Meiping’s arm and helped her onto the rope ladder, his feet scraping slightly.

  Some of the Vaucansons, responding to the new vibrations on the roof, turned and clanked toward them, as unseeing and unhearing as before.

  Amanda clutched Kanlee’s arm. “You won’t leave me?”

  Kanlee looked down at her, resenting her wealth, her deception, and her blonde wig. She lived in a mansion, passing for white.

  “Yank Yank.” Amanda searched his face, desperate yet hoping.

  Kanlee stared back as the footsteps advanced. He was a bootstrapping, part-time private detective and semi-pro shortstop. His life had no place for her.

  “Please! I have nothing.” She swept off the wig and unfastened the tabs on her skirt to let it fall closed around her beautiful legs. “I am nothing,” she said softly.

  Silver in the moonlight, some Vaucansons kept marching their way.

  Kanlee looped one arm around her cinched waist and lifted as he stepped onto the rope ladder. The coolies pulled them up as the Vaucansons plodded after them.

  While the balloon carried the rope ladder higher, the Vaucansons that were still on their feet stopped at the edge of the roof. They stepped from side to side, bunching together, searching for more vibrations. The movement of their own footsteps seemed to keep them clomping on the edge of the roof in a shining but clumsy dance.

  Then Kanlee and Amanda were in the basket, and she clung to his arm, smiling shyly.

  “Where can you take us?” Kanlee asked the man tending the coal.

  “The police are seeking you on the Bund — but some ships left Shanghai tonight. When we catch up to one, you must buy passage.”

  “I will.” The cash in his satchel would cover it.

  “You’ll have to go wherever we go,” Kanlee said to Meiping.

  “I can’t stay here now,” she said.

  Then Kanlee turned to Amanda, speaking English. “The U.S. government doesn’t like Chinese people entering the country. Put your wig back on. You’ll have a better chance of entering America as English heiress Amanda Wellstone with your Chinese handmaid.”

  Amanda slipped on the wig as she answered in perfect Hoisanese for the first time. “I know that role very well.”

  Kanlee stared at her, speechless in all languages and dialects.

  Amanda shifted back to English, with an impish smile. “Ah Wing and the other servants helped raise me with my mum’s language.”

  “What role do you play?” Meiping asked Kanlee in Hoisanese.

  Kanlee grinned, sincere at last. “This is our journey to the west — even if we travel east to get there.”

  Below them, the bright lights of the Bund lit up Shanghai harbor as they flew toward the East China Sea.

  A powerful sea breeze carried the balloon and basket in concert with the crew-driven rear propeller. Kanlee, Amanda, and Meiping said little as they sat in the upper level of the basket, until now always reserved for the wealthy. They were wrapped in woolen blankets from a hollow bench. Kanlee reloaded the Bloodfinder from rounds in his satchel and then had nothing to do but look for lights from ships in the darkness below.

  For a moment, he wondered what he would do when he got Amanda and Meiping back to Portland. Then he realized just how far they had to go. Since landing in Shanghai, he had not had a moment to think more than a few steps ahead. Surviving the night was their first worry.

  “You lost your hat,” Amanda said quietly in English. “That stylish bowler.”

  “Yeah.” Kanlee ran a hand through his hair. “Still got my head.”

  “An imp
ortant point, I grant you.”

  Kanlee found himself wondering about Amanda again.

  “When did you decide to leave your family?”

  Amanda drew her blanket tighter. “Yes, I fooled you. I wrote the letter and pretended Meiping was in trouble. Before I learned she had a cousin in America, I saw no avenue of escape.” She lowered her eyes. “At the time, I was just taking a stab in the dark. I have no justification.”

  “You said you have nothing. That mansion, the servants? The family business? Your beautiful gown?”

  “Do you believe that an illegitimate, half-caste, half-sister is truly a part of the family? That I have any inheritance or means of my own? Do you think I was ever truly allowed into Shanghai’s proper colonial society? I shall be an old maid soon, without ever receiving a proper gentleman caller. The mansion is my prison, do you see? Lyman fears if I have a friend outside the family, I might say something about his business — or reveal I’m half Chinese. Yes, my dear brother gave me the money to appear as he believes a Wellstone should, for the occasions when his friends and associates visit our home. He took me out to social events if my appearance served his purpose and he had me entertain at his whim, but my only friends are my mum’s people — our household servants.” She hesitated a moment. “The servants often took me out with them dressed as a Chinese girl, so I could learn more about life.”

  Kanlee took a moment to think through what she had said. Living in a mansion with servants sounded good unless she was treated like one — or even worse. He knew her experience was beyond his comprehension, but he was convinced she was sincere. She had been so desperate to escape her confined life that she had risked writing to a total stranger.

  A self-styled private investigator and second-rate shortstop understood bootstrapping a new life. He saw Amanda watching him, afraid of how he would judge her.

  “We’ve made our bed now,” said Kanlee.

  Amanda let out a very small breath of relief.

  “Will your brother send anyone after you? To bring you home again?”

  “At one time, he would have. Now his brain is so fogged by opium smoke, I doubt it.”

  “He must have cargo on lots of ships. Doesn’t that give him influence?”

  “Lyman has arrangements with many ship captains, but the imperial navy has been very tough on my brother’s business. Much of the family income has been choked off by a mysterious new ship called Sea Dragon.”

  Kanlee nodded, ready to dismiss thoughts of Lyman. Then he looked up at Amanda. “Sea Dragon. Tell me about this mysterious ship.”

  “It’s shaped like a Chinese dragon, you see? But the captains say it travels underwater where no one can see it coming. Then it rises to the surface to attack.”

  “And the big dragon mouth opens and clamps down on the other ship.”

  Amanda drew in a breath of surprise. “That’s what they said. How do you know that?”

  “It attacked the Yellowsea Yank. But the crew powered up the engines and escaped.”

  “Many ships escaped this Sea Dragon.”

  “Your brother only heard from the captains who got away. I wonder how many ships have been taken or sunk.”

  “That would explain a great deal,” said Amanda. “More and more of Lyman’s deliveries never arrive.”

  “Whose ship is it? The emperor’s?”

  “The rumors say the captain is one of the top imperial ministers. He’s a Manchu, but his Chinese name is Fan Feitou.”

  “Fan. Your brother thought I had something to do with a ‘Fan fellow.’”

  “I remember.”

  “What does this Fan fellow do with his ship? The Yellowsea Yank is just a passenger and light cargo clipper.”

  “The captains have heard that Fan Feitou and his ship have been ordered stop the Chinese rebels who want to overthrow the Qing Dynasty. But he also wants to drive out the foreigners. Lyman’s thinking is twisted out of all reason. He probably thought Fan sent you to threaten the family business or ask for a bribe.”

  “Your family business must be very important.”

  “It’s not just Lyman’s business. Fan Feitou patrols the East China Sea to watch all the trade to and from Shanghai, you see?”

  Kanlee looked down at the darkness below, suddenly realizing this danger could be right beneath them even now. “I see.”

  Nearly an hour after they had left the roof of the Wellstone mansion, Kanlee saw the wake of a ship below them, reflected in the light of a near three-quarter moon.

  Kanlee leaned over the steps leading to the lower level and called out to the crew chief in Hoisanese. “Ah Jin! Do you see the wake?”

  The crew chief, who had introduced himself as Liu Ah Jin, came up from the lower level. He was a very muscular man with a face that seemed oddly gaunt. The wind whipped his queue out in front of him. “That is from the last ship to leave Shanghai tonight.”

  “We can overtake it?”

  “We will,” said Ah Jin. He hesitated, as though considering whether to say more.

  “What is wrong?” Kanlee asked.

  “We cannot take the balloon back against this wind,” said Ah Jin. “When we left Shanghai, it was not this strong.”

  Kanlee understood. “If they will accept us, I will pay what they ask for all of us. You can return tomorrow?”

  “We will have a better chance, depending on the wind.”

  Kanlee looked into the darkness ahead of the wake. “I will have to negotiate with the captain, and the captain will know he has the stronger bargaining position.” He glanced at Meiping, who was gazing down at the wake as her looped braids flew in the breeze.

  “What time did that ship leave Shanghai?” Amanda asked Ah Jin in Hoisanese. “Do you know?”

  “More than an hour before we arrived at your house,” Ah Jin said.

  “A steam clipper?” Amanda asked. “A cargo ship bound for Nagasaki?”

  “A steam clipper bound for Nagasaki,” said Ah Jin.

  Amanda switched to English and turned to Kanlee. “The Cardiff Cloud. Lyman sold crates of opium to the captain. The ship carries light-weight luxury items of record as fast as possible — silk, tea, spices — for Japan. But the real cargo is the opium. That’s the profit, so it doesn’t have to carry much volume. I overhear Lyman and certain ship captains talk about such matters sometimes, you see?”

  “What does that mean to us?” Kanlee asked. He looked out at the spreading wake again, aware that none of his shortstop’s skills were going to help them reach the cargo ship.

  Ignoring Kanlee, Amanda spoke to Ah Jin in Hoisanese. “They will allow us to land?”

  “If not, we will fly until we find another ship,” said Ah Jin.

  “You have a plan?” Kanlee asked.

  Amanda clutched his arm, smiling as she lowered her face demurely. “Trust me.”

  Kanlee was surprised to realize that he did.

  When Kanlee could look down and see the outline of the narrow steam clipper ship in the moonlight, Ah Jin sounded the brass horn. An answering horn boomed from the Cardiff Cloud. The balloon crew responded by moving low over the deck.

  Kanlee saw that the Cardiff Cloud was a four-stacker with rear and side-mounted water jets. It was up on its steel skids, skimming the surface of the waves with as little of its narrow hull cutting through the water as possible.

  Ah Jin exchanged shouts with a member of the ship’s crew in Hoisanese, and the balloon lowered the basket onto the deck.

  “Bargain quickly,” Ah Jin called from the lower level of the basket. “We will keep the balloon up in case we have to leave again.”

  Kanlee nodded and helped Amanda and Meiping down the ladder onto the deck. He tossed back the blanket he had been using and strode forward with the wind whipping his suit coat. Gaslamps from the pilothouse threw a glow over a stout, gray-haired man in a captain’s uniform in the company of several other officers. He wore a short beard along his jawline but had no mustache. Other crew members, including
the Hoisanese man who had been calling back and forth with Ah Jin, stood back in the shadows.

  “Now, what is the meaning of this intrusion?” The captain spoke with an educated English accent as he glared at Kanlee.

  Amanda stepped in front of Kanlee, still gripping a blanket, but now she held it at her neck with one hand and let it fly out behind her in the wind like a cape.

  Kanlee, alert for danger but also fascinated, saw that her other hand appeared to be protecting her eyes, but really held her wig in place. She had again fastened the tabs that parted her skirt to show off her shapely legs and the rear of the skirt fluttered out behind her. The indirect gaslight glowed off her blonde wig. Now she had her turn to be insincere.

  “Captain Berwick.” She gave him a haughty look.

  “Do I know you, miss?” The captain gave her a hard look that softened as he took in her appearance.

  “Amanda Wellstone of the International Settlement in Shanghai,” she said in her aristocratic accent. “My brother Lyman introduced us on one of your visits to our home. You two shared brandy, I believe.” Without turning, she added, “This is my bodyguard, Mr. Kung, and my handmaid.”

  Berwick’s eyes widened slightly. He slipped off his hat and stuck it under his left arm. “Of course, Miss Wellstone. I ask your pardon for not recognizing you straightaway.”

  Kanlee guessed that Berwick’s crisp move with his hat came from a background in the British Royal Navy. That meant he had either retired or had been cashiered. Maybe he had started running opium privately when he was still in the Royal Navy, and that had led to his ejection.

  “Quite understandable, given the circumstances,” said Amanda.

  “We have rules and customs about women on shipboard, Miss Wellstone. I must ask you to continue on your way, with my sincerest regrets.”

  Amanda took a step closer to Berwick. “You are speaking nonsense, you see? Somewhere on this ship you have certain crates.”

  Berwick met the eyes of one of his officers and tilted his head slightly. The officer steered the other crew members away.

  Kanlee maintained a formal look despite his amusement at Amanda bluffing Berwick into tipping his hand.