Morgan wondered. The clockwork gambler was far away by now, more inaccessible than Mexico, almost as remote as the moon.
The rainmaker said hopefully, “Wells Fargo has a new line that goes to the High Frontier. Got to stay ahead of them railroads. Schooner lands next Monday.”
“What day is today?” Morgan could guess at the month, but not the day.
“Today’s a Wednesday.”
Five days to get a grub stake together. Morgan bit his lower lip. He’d seen an airship once, a big copper-colored bulb glowing in the sunset as it sailed through ruddy clouds. Pretty and untouchable, like a trout swimming in deep, clear water.
“The dance-hall girl,” Morgan said. “She have any friends?”
The preacher squinted, giving an appraising look, and nodded sagely. “You thinking ’bout going after him?”
It seemed audacious. Hunting a clockwork alone was foolhardy, and few men had the kind of money needed for airfare.
Morgan nodded. “Justice shouldn’t be confined by borders.”
The rainmaker nodded agreement, then thrust a hand into his pocket, pulled out some bills and change, handed them over. “Here’s a donation for your cause, Lawman. Lacy didn’t have a lot of friends, but she had a lot of men who longed for her from afar. Check the saloon.”
Morgan’s heart broke at the mention of Lacy’s name. He remembered the red-haired girl, her innocent smile. He’d seen her before. But what was she doing in Laramie?
She’d come here for safety, he figured, like everyone else. Scared of the renegades. They were like sheep, huddled in a pen.
He’d felt so in awe of Lacy, he couldn’t have dared even speak to her, much less ask to hold her hand. In some ways, she was little more than a dream, a thing of ephemeral beauty.
The preacher smiled and began pounding his drum with extra vigor. “Come, horrid bursts of thunder!” he commanded. “Come sheets of fire! Groan ye winds and roar ye rain!”
On the horizon, the clouds darkened and again began lumbering toward Laramie.
* * *
A week later, Morgan found himself in the gondola of a dirigible.
It turned out that Lacy had had a lot of friends in Laramie. Though none was rich enough to afford passage to the High Frontier on their own, and none was mad enough to shoot it out with a clockwork, Morgan was able to scrape together enough money for his passage.
The balloon above the gondola was shaped like a fancy glass Christmas tree ornament, all covered in gold silk. A steam engine powered the dirigible, providing a steady thump, thump, thump as pistons pounded and blades spun.
The gondola swung beneath the huge balloon, connected by skywires. Its decks were all hewn from new cedar and sandalwood; their scent complemented the smell of sky and sun and wind.
City slickers and foreigners sat in the parlor cabin, toasting their good fortune and dancing while bands played.
Morgan could hear their music, smell their roast beef, sometimes even glimpse them dancing. But he wasn’t a railroad tycoon or a mining magnate or a politician.
He’d taken passage in the lower deck, in the “Belly of the Beast,” as they called it, and had one small porthole in his cabin to peer through.
Still, the sight was glorious.
The dirigible reached the High Frontier at sunset, just as the sun dipped below the sea, leaving the clouds below to be a half-lit mass of swirling wine and fuchsia.
One could only find the High Frontier at that time of day—when the sun had set and the full moon was poised to rise on the far side of the Earth. It was a magical place, nestled in the clouds.
Down below the skyship, a silver city rose—elegant spires like fairy castles, with windows lit up like gemstones. The colored glass in those windows made it look as if sapphires, rubies, and diamonds were scattered over the city.
The skyship landed amid glorious swirling clouds, and the rich folk marched down the promenade, arm in arm, laughing and joking and celebrating their good fortune. On the deck, the band came out and played soft chamber music.
Women oohed and aahed at the spectacle, while men stood open-mouthed. Morgan imagined that saints might make such sounds as they entered heaven.
The High Frontier had only been discovered four years back. Who had built the silver castles, no one knew. How the cities of stone floated in the clouds was also a mystery.
Angels lived there—scrawny girls with wings, ethereal in their beauty. But they were feral creatures, barbaric, and it was said that when the first explorers had entered the silver city, the angels were roosting over the arches—little more than filthy pigeons.
Some thought that it had once been an outpost, that perhaps angels had once been wiser, more civilized, and that they rested here while carrying messages back and forth between heaven and Earth.
One guess was as good as another. But a new territory was opening up, and folks were eager to be the first to see it. Morgan couldn’t figure how a man might make a living here. The sky was always twilit, so you couldn’t grow crops. The clouds were somehow thick enough to walk on, but there was nothing to mine.
Just a pretty place to visit, Morgan thought.
When the rich folk were mostly gone, Morgan made his way down the gangplank. A fancy dude in a bowler hat stood at the top of the gangway, smoking a fine cigar that perfumed the air.
He glanced at Morgan, smiled, and said, “Das ist schön, nicht wahr?”
Morgan grinned back. “Sorry,” he apologized. “I don’t reckon we speak the same language.”
Morgan walked down the gangplank, his spurs jangling with every step, and trundled through the city. He imagined that madmen had fashioned the soaring arches above the city gate, now planted with vines and lianas that streamed in living curtains.
Maybe a fella could grow crops up here after all, he mused, though the light is low. Butterflies and hummingbirds danced among the flowers.
As he entered the silver city, spires rose up on either side. There was something both strange and yet oddly organic about the tall buildings, as if some alien intelligence had sought to build a city for humans. Perhaps dove-men had designed it, or termites. He wasn’t sure.
People filed off in a number of directions. It was rumored that many a tycoon had bought houses here—Cornelius Vanderbilt, Russell Sage, along with royals out of Europe and Russia. Even Queen Victoria had a new “summerhouse” here.
All the high-falutin’ folks sauntered off to their destinations, and Morgan felt lost.
One fairy castle looked much like another. He searched for an hour, and as he rounded a corner, he found what he was looking for: the wing doors of a Western saloon. He could hear loud piano music inside, and smell spilled beer on its oak floors.
He walked into the saloon and found a madhouse.
On either side of the door were golden cages up over his head, and angels were housed there—small girls, perhaps eight or nine, with fabulous wings larger than any swan’s. Their hair was as white as spun silver, their faces translucent.
But their dark eyes were lined with a thick band of kohl, as if they were raccoons. They drew back from Morgan and hissed.
Unbidden, a dark thought entered his mind. When he was a child, Morgan’s mother had always told him that when a man dies, the angels come to take his soul to heaven.
He could be walking to his death.
A verse from Psalms came to mind, one of his ma’s favorites: “Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of him? Or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels…”
As if divining his thoughts, one of the angels hissed at him and bared her teeth. She scooped a turd up from her cage and hurled it. Then grabbed a corn cob and tossed that, too.
Morgan dodged and hurried past.
Inside, the place was alive. Dance-hall girls strutted on stage to clanking pianos and catcalls. Men hunched at tables, drinking and telling jokes. It was much like a saloon, but it suffered from the same miserab
le clientele as he’d seen on the dirigible—European barons in bright silk vests and overcoats. Eastern dudes. Moguls and robber barons.
The beer wasn’t sold in glass jugs, but in decorous tankards, inlaid with silver and precious stones.
The place smelled more of gold than of liquor. Pipe smoke perfumed the air.
But the clockwork gambler was surprisingly easy to spot. In fact, Morgan gasped and stepped back in surprise when he saw him.
The clockwork was obviously not human. His face had been sculpted from porcelain, like the head of a doll, and painted in natural colors, but there were brass hinges on his jaws. When he blinked, copper eyelids flashed over glass eyes.
He wore all black, from his hat to his boots, and sat at a card table with a stack of poker chips in front of him. He had a little gambling kit off to one side. Morgan was familiar with such kits. They held decks of cards for various games, dice made of bone and ivory, and always they held weapons—a pistol and a throwing knife.
The clockwork gambler sat with three wealthy men. By the piles of solid gold coins in front of him, he was winning.
Morgan steeled his nerves, walked up to the table, and said, “You gentlemen might want to back away.”
The patrons scattered aside as Morgan pulled back his coat to reveal the star on his chest.
Some men cried out as they fled, and others ducked as if dodging imaginary bullets. The clockwork gambler just leaned back casually in his chair, as calm as a summer’s morning. His mouth seemed to have little porcelain shingles around it that moved to his will, so that when he smiled, it created a crude approximation of a grin. The creature’s teeth were as white as shards of ice.
“Here to try your luck?” the clockwork asked.
“Your name Hellfire?” Morgan replied.
The gambler nodded, barely tipping his hat.
Morgan felt his hands shaking, and his mouth suddenly dried. He’d never seen a man face death with equanimity the way that this clockwork did. It was unnatural. Almost unholy.
I’m betrayed by my humanity, Morgan thought. Flesh and blood, gristle and bone—they undo me.
In that instant, he knew that he was no match for the clockwork gambler.
“Tell you what, stranger,” the clockwork said. “Let’s draw cards for your life. You get the high card, you get the first shot at me.”
Morgan shook his head.
“Come on,” the gambler said reasonably. “It’s the best chance you’ve got. Your flesh was created by God, and thus has its all-too human limitations. I was made to draw faster than you, to shoot straighter.”
“You might be a better killer than me, but that don’t make you a better man.”
“When killing is all that matters, maybe it does,” the clockwork said.
The silence drew out. Morgan wasn’t sure if he should let the clockwork draw first. He didn’t know where to aim. The creature’s chest provided the biggest target, but it was the best protected by layers of metal. The joints where its neck met its head might be better. But what was a head to this machine? Did thoughts originate there, or elsewhere? The head looked no more serviceable than that of a poppet.
The gambler smiled. “Your human sense of honor bothering you? Is that it?”
“I want justice,” Morgan said. “I demand justice.”
“On the High Frontier?” the gambler mocked. “There is no justice here—just a pretty tomb, the ruins of a grander civilization. This is Rome! This is Egypt!”
He waved his hands wide, displaying the ornate walls carved with silver, the golden cages with captive angels. “This is what is left of your dead god. But I am the future.”
Morgan had heard a lot of talk about God being dead over the years, from the beginning of the Civil War. But the discovery of these ruins proved it to the minds of many.
“Tell you what,” the gambler said. “Your legs are shaking. I won’t shoot you now. Let’s try the cards. I’ll draw for you.”
The gambler placed a fresh deck on the table, pulled a card off the top, and laid it upright. It was a Jack of Hearts. He smiled, as if in relief.
“I didn’t come to gamble,” Morgan said. “I came for justice.”
“Seeking justice is always a gamble,” Hellfire answered reasonably. “Justice doesn’t exist in nature. It’s just the use of force, backed up by self-righteous judgment.”
The gambler cut the deck, pulled off the top card, flipped it: the Ace of Spades.
“You win!” the gambler grinned.
Morgan was all nerves and jitters but pulled his piece anyway, took a full quarter second to get his bearings, and fired. The bullet ripped into the gambler’s bowtie, and there was a metallic zing as it ricocheted into the crowd.
Someone cried out, “Mein Gott!” and a woman yelled, “He’s been shot!”
Morgan’s face fell. He hadn’t meant to wing a bystander. He glanced to his right, saw a fat bloke clutching his chest, blood blossoming on a white shirt.
Morgan ducked low and tried to aim at the clockwork, but faster than the eye could move the gambler drew, aimed, and fired. The bullet took Morgan straight in the chest and threw him backward as if he’d been kicked by a horse.
Morgan fell and wheezed, trying to suck air, but he heard blood gurgling from the hole in his ribs. His lungs burned as if someone had stuck a hot poker through them.
He looked right and left, hoping someone would help him, but all that he saw were frightened faces. He had heard that there was no law on the High Frontier, only money.
No one would stop the killing. No one would avenge him.
As he lay on his back and felt blood pooling on the floor, he fought to stay conscious. The clockwork gambler strode toward him, smiling down, his porcelain face a mockery of flesh.
Morgan realized that he’d been charging dead, from the moment he’d started this hunt. When he’d missed the skinwalker, he should have seen it as a sign.
“Your human tinkermen have made me well, have they not?” Hellfire asked. “You humans, in such a hurry to create. It was inevitable that you would fashion your replacements.”
Over the clockwork’s shoulder, Morgan saw his angels—leering from their cages. One was grabbing at the lock on its golden door, trying to break free, as if to come for him.
But Morgan was on his way out, like the buffalo, and the Indians, and thunderbirds, and all the other great things in the wide world.
The gambler aimed at Morgan’s head. There was no shaking in his hands, no hesitation. He pulled the trigger.
Thus, a new wonder in the world supplanted an old.
THE HELL-BOUND STAGECOACH
MIKE RESNICK
Arizona Territory, Circa 1885
The tall lean man stood alone on the prairie, a thin cigar in his mouth, his Stetson shielding his eyes from the sun. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been waiting there, but it couldn’t have been too long. It was a blazing hot day, there was no shade anywhere near him, and yet he wasn’t sweating.
Finally the stagecoach came into view, drawn by a team of sleek, coal-black horses. They raced over the ground, raising endless clouds of dust, but when the driver saw he had a passenger waiting he eased them first to a trot, then a walk, and at last they came to a stop just as they reached the man.
The man stared at the stagecoach, which was a little fancier than he was used to.
“Climb aboard, climb aboard,” said the driver, a small, gnarly man with piercing dark eyes. “I got a schedule to keep.”
The man nodded, a door opened, and he climbed into the interior of the coach as the horses started moving again. The only other passenger was a prim, middle-aged woman, her hair starting to turn gray, her dress buttoned all the way up to the neck despite the heat. She held a wicker basket on her lap.
“Good morning, ma’am,” said the man, tipping his hat. “My name’s Ben, Ben Bradshaw.”
“And I am Abigail Fletcher,” she replied.
“I’m pleased to make your acquai
ntance, ma’am,” said Bradshaw, extending his hand. She took it in a firm grip and shook it. “Looks like we’re going to be traveling together.”
She nodded her agreement. “Have you eaten, young man?”
“I truly don’t recall, ma’am,” he said. “And please call me Ben.”
She indicated her basket. “Would you like a biscuit?”
“I’d surely appreciate one, ma’am.”
She opened the basket and withdrew a tidily-wrapped biscuit, offering it to him.
“Thank you kindly, ma’am,” said Bradshaw, unwrapping it and taking a bite. “Have you come a long ways?”
“Sometimes it feels like it,” she responded.
“I meant, on the coach?”
“Not that far.”
“Where are you heading, ma’am?”
“The end of the line,” she replied. “And you, young man?”
“Ben,” he corrected her. “And I’m here for the rest of the trip, too.” He looked out the window at the dry, barren landscape. “Hope it gets a little cooler soon.”
The driver laughed at that, which surprised Bradshaw, who hadn’t thought anything they said in the coach would carry outside to where the gnarly man sat, holding the reins.
“This is a right tasty biscuit, ma’am,” said Bradshaw. “I guess I was hungrier than I thought.”
“What do you do for a living, young… Ben?” asked Abigail.
“Oh, a little of this, a little of that, nothing very interesting,” replied Bradshaw. “I just try to earn a dollar here and there.” He paused and stared at her, “What about you, ma’am? If I was to guess, I’d say that you’re a schoolmarm.”
He couldn’t tell if the statement pleased her or annoyed her. Her expression gave nothing away.
“What does a schoolmarm look like?” she asked.
He searched for the right word. “Proper,” he said at last, then considered it, nodded his head, and repeated it. “Proper. Like nothing much upsets you, and you’ve got a handle on everything.”
“Well, now,” said Abigail, “that could be flattering or insulting. I think I’ll choose to be flattered.”
“I certainly didn’t mean it no other way, ma’am,” Bradshaw assured her. He fidgeted uncomfortably for a moment. “Could I maybe trouble you for another one of them biscuits, ma’am? They make powerful good eating.”
Dead Man’s Hand Page 5