Clockwork Chaos

by C. J. Henderson

  “No regrets at all?”

  “Only that we haven’t got the time now to make Mrs. Carrigan even more jealous.”

  Mary shakes her head. “If that’s your biggest worry, you haven’t been paying attention to what’s around us.”

  “Don’t you worry, lass. The old girl may look like a dated has-been, but she’s got a few surprises left in her. Now off with you.”

  Carrigan slaps her on the buttocks as she turns to climb into the balloon’s gondola; Yaqub catches her under the arms and lifts her in. On the deck, sailors work the two ropes that tether them to the Light Brigade, playing them out like fishing line until the balloon hovers a hundred feet above the surface of the sea.

  “Right,” Mary says. “We don’t know how much time we have before things go bad. Let’s get to work.”

  The deck lurched suddenly under her feet, knocking her to the floor. Flames flared across the ceiling of the cabin, and the windows burst outward. The ship plummeted toward the sea, tipping precipitously.

  The Influence Machine slid across the deck.

  Hauptfeldwebel Stern cursed and flung himself in front of it, then screamed as the machine crushed him against the sharp glass jutting from the window frame. Lodged in the window, the Hauptfeldwebel’s body prevented the machine from slipping out and into the depths.

  What came after was and remains confusion. Flames, and water, and thick, viscous oil from the engines, and hands, strong hands that pulled at her.

  “Let go of it, lass,” one of the men said. She’s not sure now who it was. Maybe it was Mr. Gibson.

  “No!” Mary realized that she was holding onto the machine, arms wrapped around the frame, keeping it from sinking. “No, we have to save it!”

  It was Yaqub—she knows the color of his skin now, deep and rich as coffee, unique on the Light Brigade—who grasped the machine and pulled it to the side of the skiff. Three men heaved it up out of the roiling waters and onto the little boat. Mr. Gibson—it was Mr. Gibson—dragged her in and dropped her, coughing and spitting, on the deck. The men rowed quickly to get out from under the flaming and collapsing gas bag.

  “What in God’s name is that thing?”

  Mary wasn’t sure whether they meant the airship or the Influence Machine, but at that point she didn’t care. She sat up and felt inside her blouse. Yes, she still had the stolen parts.

  “Get us somewhere dry, luv, and I’ll show you.”

  The Influence Machine is complicated. It took years to build; it took a brilliant scientist nearly a month to piece together. And Mary is just a girl.

  But she knows this thing, this monstrous wonder. She has lived with it, killed for it, lost friends and lovers to it. She’s put it together and taken it apart. She has held every piece of this thing in her hands, watched them fitted together, and she doesn’t need Graf Zeppelin’s little book—fallen from the flaming airship into the waters off Southwest Africa—to tell her how it works. She imagines the ink running like blood from the charred pages into the currents, around the Cape and beyond, circling the world forever. She has put it together before, and she has sat in the Devil’s seat, electricity playing over her head, with the world subject to her every whim.

  She looks down at the Light Brigade, at the sailors scurrying across the deck like frightened ants, at the flash of Tom’s red coat flapping in the wind. Each one her willing slave, ever since she demonstrated the machine to them, back in Lüderitz harbor. Each one ready to die for her. Loyalty such as the Queen never imagined.

  And she can’t say that she hasn’t thought about it. Queen Mary. Empress Mary.

  She laughs and draws Yaqub into a fierce embrace. “When I am Empress, will you still love me?”

  Yaqub’s eyes wrinkle. “When you are Empress, will you even remember me?”

  Mary snorts. Stupid question. She won’t be Empress. She won’t even live out the day, and neither will he. All they can hope is to save the crew of the Light Brigade. “Get back to work.”

  “Yes, your Majesty.”

  The balloon bobs at the end of its tethers while below the negotiations over the price of the world flash in semaphore across the waters of the North Atlantic. Yaqub works at modifying the engine that heats the air that lifts the balloon and runs the propeller, and Mary constructs the Influence Machine.

  After that, it is just a matter of waiting.

  Mary smiles. It’s a beautiful day, up in the sky and far from the hassle of ship’s chores and the stink of men and fish too long in close quarters. The breeze is pleasant and fresh, and the sweat glistens on Yaqub’s skin, slick under her hands and against her belly, and Mary knows that when she is Empress, she’ll know exactly how to reward her most loyal subjects.

  It is midafternoon when the final bids come in. Captain Carrigan sends a note up the rope. Yaqub reads it out loud.

  “The East India Company offers to pay the most. The British will spend less, but offer us all amnesty, and me—by that they mean him—a knighthood. The Mongols tell the truth, that the others are lying, and if we give them the machine, they will spare our lives. We’ll accept the East India Company’s offer, sail toward the British, and make a run for it when the fighting starts.”

  “Tell him we’ll be ready,” Mary says.

  Yaqub scribbles on the paper, clips it back to the line. The pulley spins and the paper disappears into the distance.

  “Ready?” Mary smiles at Yaqub and tries to hide her nervousness. “You’ll need to strap me into this thing.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Yaqub quips.

  Below them, flags wave, and ships begin to move. The Light Brigade’s sails unfurl and catch in the wind. The clipper turns, graceful as a dolphin, and heads toward the British fleet.

  And the battle begins.

  Six years earlier, Mrs. Thomas Carrigan, acting as a proxy for a group of eccentric Colonists who fancied themselves The Children of the Revolutions, saved the Light Brigade from an ignoble fate as a coal hulk. Over the course of five years, they had renovated and retrofitted the aging clipper with the most promising technologies their scientists and inventors had developed. This was her maiden voyage, the one that would prove whether a fleet of such ships might be enough to tip the scales, and the Colonies finally win their independence.

  The thin, nearly frictionless coating on the outer hull let the clipper cut through the waves like a hot knife through lard, and had let them keep their lead over two fleets all the way from the coast of Africa nearly to Hatteras. A distinct advantage, but not so obvious that it couldn’t be attributed to luck and a skillful crew.

  Captain Carrigan sets course directly toward the British flagship. His flagman sends the message: “Protect us.” It’s not yet time to reveal their other surprises.

  To port, the French and Mongol Alliance ships move against the British, those already within range opening fire. To starboard, the East India Company’s fleet does the same.

  The British respond: “Prepare to be boarded.” The Light Brigade signals assent. They move unhampered through the British fleet as they approach the flagship. Two ironclad frigates flank them on either side, and close. It’s not until they can see the grappling hooks that Carrigan gives the order.

  A gunport opens on either side of the Light Brigade’s hull, and a single shot roars from each. They punch holes in the ironclads’ sides, then explode with enough force to break the ships’ backs.

  “Damned things worked,” Mr. Gibson says.

  “Aye, that they did. Pity we’ve only got two left.” Carrigan strokes the wheel as the engines hidden deep below deck roar to life. Turbines built into the ship’s hull spin and the ocean churns to foam. “C’mon, love, let’s see what you’ve got.”

  Watching as the British flagship turns its big guns on his ship, he doesn’t notice the balloon’s tethers falling loose behind them, or the balloon’s rapid decent as it veers off to port.

  It isn’t that she can feel herself in their minds. More that she can
feel them in hers.

  Yaqub steers the balloon, manipulating the direction of the propeller, and they swing low over the British fleet. Too far, still, for the Influence Machine to have an effect, if Yaqub had been cranking it as he had before. But he wasn’t. It’s connected to the balloon’s engine, and the twin wheels spin faster than any human could ever crank them.

  Some part of her smells burning hair, and burning flesh, and idly wonders if it is hers. Most of her is otherwise occupied.

  Her dictates to her victims are simple: Those who fly the same flag as yours are traitors, more dangerous even than your worst enemies, and waiting only for the fighting to start so that they can shoot you in the back. She plants the seed deep and wills it flower.

  A British destroyer turns its guns away from the Light Brigade to fire on its own flagship, which responds in kind. Picking up speed, the Light Brigade slips past the embattled ships.

  The violence spreads in the wake of the balloon’s passing, spilling far beyond Mary’s reach as those unaffected are drawn into the fire-fight. Yaqub steers the craft in a wide arc, circumnavigating the ring of ships that once threatened them. As they complete their circle, Yaqub cries out.

  “They’re free!” He points at the clipper, sailing full speed away from the conflagration. Mary can’t turn her head to see, but she can see it in Yaqub’s mind. Smoke rises from the ship, but not enough to worry about. His ship is safe. And so are her people.

  Yaqub kills power to the Influence Machine and increases power to the heating element, and they rise, up above the stench of burning ships and the cries of dying men, and drift away on an easterly wind.

  The balloon starts to lose altitude shortly after they run out of fuel.

  Though she was drained and ill after the battle, Mary didn’t rest, not until the machine had been fully dismantled and the pieces dropped, one by one, into the North Atlantic. It was near dusk when the last piece drowned, and Mary very nearly followed, her strength failing as she tried to clamber over the railing.

  Yaqub caught her. He laid her head in his lap and gently applied a cooling salve to her burnt skin.

  “I’m a monster,” Mary said. “I’m as bad as the Devil. Worse. I deserve to die.”

  “You’re not. The Devil would take that as triumph, and then do the same all over the world. You could have been Empress. You could have had everything. You threw it all away. And that is why you are not the Devil.”

  “I killed Julia. I cut off her face. I cut out her...” Like a dam breaking, it spills from her, the tears, the grief and the guilt. The terrible, impossible decision she’d forced on her lover, her desperate, broken lover, and Julia’s escape in a bottle of rat poison. The convulsions were just starting when Mary arrived home with their tickets to Amsterdam.

  “I’ve seen a man die of arsenic poisoning,” Yaqub says. “What you did was a kindness.”

  Julia had been beyond kindness. Had been for longer than Mary had ever imagined.

  “Help me,” she’d begged. “Make it stop hurting.” She grabbed Mary and held her close enough to feel every convulsion. “Make it look like my father did it. Make it look like the Ripper.”

  She did. And then she and her knife visited the home of one last gentleman before she set sail for Amsterdam. For Julia.

  The gondola is the size of a lifeboat, perhaps a little smaller. It is hard to rate the speed of their decent, or what side of a wave they’ll strike on landing; the moon is near new, and useless tonight. Yaqub braces himself for impact, but it still knocks him on his ass.

  He scrambles to his feet, slashing the ropes that hold them to the balloon. If he cannot free them in time, they will capsize, or be swamped and drowned in the thick sailcloth.

  Of course, a quick death is preferable to a lingering death by starvation and thirst. But instincts die hard, and he gets the last of the ropes cut. Freed of their weight, the balloon rises up and out of sight.

  “It’s okay,” he says, as much to the waves as to himself. “They’ll find us.”

  “No.” Mary is sitting up, woken by the rough landing. “They won’t. I freed them. I freed you all. Even before we started... before the massacre.” She shrugs, the horror of the day before—the horror of her life—once again buried, and the world once again just another fact. “There’s no more compulsion on them to help. Tom Carrigan’s a smart man. He’ll be getting as far away from me as he can.”

  Yaqub exhales, a long sigh punctuated with the slapping of wavelets against the gondola’s prow. "That's another thing the Devil would never think to do."

  That night, they sit together under the stars, close enough to share each other’s warmth, and one by one, they redraw and rename the constellations—the Whore, the Zeppelin, The Devil’s Bowler, the Three Flacid Penises—names the world would embrace, should she ever become Empress.

  Before they sleep, Yaqub kisses her softly, and says, “They will come for us. I can feel it in my bones. You will see.”

  For once, dawn brings good news.

  Bell, Cog, and Scandal

  R. Rozakis

  Evangeline Bell woke in a strange bed. In the dim light behind the bedcurtains, it took her a moment to remember where she was. Then, her heart sank.

  Yesterday had begun so promisingly. Lord Hilden’s house party had gathered the leading scientists working in airship design. She still could barely believe she had been invited. No degree, no retinue more than a farmhand assistant she had trained herself. But Lord Hilden had called her monograph on a proposed steam engine governor brilliant. And indeed, her lecture went over smashingly well.

  It was at dinner that it all turned sour. Evangeline had never been terribly good at small talk, or fashionable dressing, or any of the other skills a young lady should possess. She might be able to lecture well, but as soon as the conversation turned to travel, she revealed herself to be a hopeless bumpkin. It wasn’t fair. If she could have afforded to go on a Grand Tour in the first place, she would never have yearned so hard for a spot on the airship-design team.

  Professor von Karloff, the glowering aether dynamics specialist, had turned on her, grilling her on her lack of formal education. Sensing the blood in the water, the ladies across the table began a never-ending procession of subtle jabs at her hair and dress. Never mind that what they knew of science could fit in a thimble and they had only been invited to round out the party. Their hair had been expertly styled by their maids, and apparently that was what mattered. When the card tables began to appear for games of whist she could not afford, she pleaded a headache and fled.

  It didn’t matter how brilliant a scientist she might be. Convention always tripped her up in the end.

  She shook herself mentally. No self-pity. Instead, she needed to get up and make herself presentable. She would give her demonstration of her preliminary governor model, and then she would pack up her equipment and her assistant, Jeremy Wright, and she would go home before she could embarrass herself further.

  She chose a dark green walking dress for the day. The bustle was small enough that she shouldn’t have too much trouble hitting things when she turned around in the lab. She fingered the material. It seemed a pity. She did really like this dress, and she knew that it would be forever linked in her head to a day she already dreaded. She sighed, reminded herself of her “no self-pity” rule, and dressed for the day. Her hair went up in a simple bun. She didn’t realize how angrily she was stabbing the pins in until she embedded one of them in her scalp. She grimaced, but took more care with the rest.

  One of the twins greeted her heartily when she appeared in the breakfast room, as if nothing had happened the previous night. She did not know if this one was playing the gentleman, or he really had been too distracted to notice. Bertrand and Edmund Woosley had recently published a paper on the chemistry of balloon gases, and she still could not tell one from the other. But he did not seem put off by her subdued greeting. She went to the sideboard and chose a pastry, hoping to make it through th
e rest of breakfast without needing further social pleasantries.

  She had no such luck. Dr. Abrams settled down next to her not five minutes later, with a cup of coffee.

  “May I get you some, my dear?”

  “Coffee?” She shook her head. “No, thank you.”

  He did not leave, which had been her first wish. Nor did he spontaneously combust, which had been the second.

  Instead, he offered her tea. She accepted, hoping that would drive him off, since denial had failed. He merely reappeared with the teacup and retook his seat.

  “Where did you disappear off to, last night?” he asked, buttering a slice of toast.

  “I was tired,” she answered, praying perhaps for a lab explosion to set the house on fire. The walls remained disappointingly solid. “It was a long day. I retired early.”

  He looked at her sympathetically. “They aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, you know.”

  “Who?” She knew who he meant. It was kind of him to try.

  “The pretty airheads,” he replied. He leaned toward her earnestly. “You’ll notice that they’re not here today, and yet you are. I, for one, am very much looking forward to your demonstration. I hope you’ll be at mine later in the week.”

  She felt touched, despite herself. And a bit dismayed at how transparent he found her. But perhaps she should stay the course. Letting a pack of airheads drive her from the field would be an admission of defeat.

  “I should like that,” she replied, and forced a smile.

  “Excellent, excellent,” he smiled back at her. Then he looked over her shoulder. “Ah, Professor. Good to see you this morning.”

  MacTaggert came up behind her. The engineer had the fiery red hair that might have been expected, but also a twisted scar from temple to eyebrow and a glass eye that were less so. The iris was violet, which clashed rather badly with his remaining green eye. The glass eye had become turned around somehow, so only the rim of the iris peeked at the corner of his eye. The effect was alarming.