Clockwork Chaos

by C. J. Henderson

  “Chipper?” Cecil whispered.

  Chipper answered by petting Cecil’s earlobe. At the back of the aisle, Elizabeth allowed the rest of the bridal party—her two sisters and Cecil’s two groomsmen—to enter before her. Finally, she dismissed the young flower girl from her duty, sending her to sit with her mother. William, alarmed, leaned down to his daughter.

  “What are you doing?” he hissed. “This is completely out of line! Tradition states that the order is—”

  But Elizabeth cut him off.

  “I’m breaking with tradition. Father, please take a seat.”

  For a moment, William looked as if he was going to argue, but decided against it, following his daughter’s wishes. Then, her white dress gleaming in the sun and her bouquet smelling of the freshest flowers, Elizabeth took exactly five steps down the aisle.

  And there, she stopped. Unseen by the guests, she hit a small button that led to a machine she had rigged into her bouquet. Immediately, two spouts of flower petals began to spring forth upon the ground like some lovely fountain. The audience was pleasantly awed. Grinning a sly smile, she removed one hand from her bouquet and hit a hidden button on the left-inside sleeve of her wedding down, moving the bouquet so that it hung limply by her side. This audience had already seen two of her projects from the night before—the bouquet and Chipper’s fur. It was time to reveal the third. The dress itself.

  Gears whirred as the dress began to transform before everyone’s very eyes. Gasping and muttering, the audience watched as the front part of her skirt slowly lifted to hang, gathered, just in the middle of her thighs, revealing the knee-high white, laced boots and white fishnet stockings beneath her dress. The solid satin of her sleeves pulled up and tucked themselves under at her elbow, revealing nothing but a laced white sleeve instead. The chest of her dress lowered to reveal the full neck cuff she had put on and some of her cleavage. And finally, the satin covering her upper-back rose—leaving more lace behind—to form a high collar around her neck. From the place where her bustle should be, she removed a small top hat, all in white and decorated with golden clock gears, and placed it upon her head. With her dress fully transformed, she finished her walk up the aisle, where Cecil stood, stunned.

  The audience was not thrilled by this reveal. Several of the guests had already stood, indignantly, and taken their leave. Finally, only a handful of people—among them, the parents—remained.

  “Elizabeth!” Mary screeched shrilly.

  “Mother, I told you and Father both that I did not wish to marry. So, if I have to marry, I wish to do so in my own way. That is the end of it,” Elizabeth said proudly.

  Lord Phillip Waltham stood, looking so much like an older version of his son, and said, “This is simply scandalous! We will not have our only son wed to this... this... harlot!”

  William and Mary gasped, and Cecil stepped forward.

  “Please! If truth be told, I do not wish to marry either. I... am fond of Elizabeth, and perhaps we shall marry in the future. But as of now, I am more interested in the partnership we could develop as fellow inventors,” he said.

  Phillip and Edna looked nothing short of shocked while Mary and William looked like they had died and returned from a surprising afterlife. No one spoke for a long while. Finally, Mary cleared her throat.

  “But... you will marry her... one day?” she choked out.

  Cecil and Elizabeth exchanged glances, and she smiled to see Cecil blush at her dress. Turning quickly back, he nodded.

  “Yes, Lady Nigel. After we have gotten to know of one another.”

  With the remaining guests and parents grumbling that that answer was “good enough,” the garden emptied of all but Cecil, Elizabeth, and Chipper.

  “Thank you,” Elizabeth said, tossing her bouquet carelessly to the side. “Not many would have stood up for me like that. I knew I was taking a great risk.”

  “Ah, but Liza, isn’t that the very soul of invention? Risk? I think that one day we will marry... but for now... explain how you altered your gown. We might be able to find a very lucrative market for self-changing clothes.”

  Hours passed and the sun had long set before either noticed. But, by the end of that day, neither had married, but both had made a commitment to the project of Self-Changing Clothes.

  A Cat’s Cry in Pluto’s Kitchen

  James Chambers

  The fleeing boy hurdled a pile of rotting trash then dashed toward a hole in the brick wall at the end of the dank, theater district alley. Darting ahead of Detective Daniel Matheson and three of New Alexandria’s finest, Morris Garvey leapt after him, skidding on slick garbage as he landed, almost falling, but then racing faster when the boy dove for his escape route. Garvey, a man who acknowledged few limits, poured it on then skidded to a crouch and snatched the boy’s feet before he passed all the way through the hole. He yanked him back and lifted him. In the boy’s tight grip dangled a burlap sack stuffed with cash, plucked only minutes ago from a crack in the foundation of the Fullerton Street Burlesque House—ransom placed there this hazy Sunday morning in hopes of recovering Brazilian virtuoso Felipe Sandeman’s stolen violin. One glance told Garvey, who had handled rough street children before, that the struggling, kicking boy, about twelve years old, was not the thief they were looking for, only a simple courier, or worse yet, a naïve patsy. Now he needed the boy to gather his wits and focus on what he had to say before Matheson’s coppers caught up and put the fear of God into him. The detective’s hand-picked squad was a trusty group, but they believed intimidation was the only way to deal with children.

  “Boy,” he said. “Look at my face. Do you know who I am?”

  The boy glanced at Garvey but kept struggling. When awareness lit up his eyes, he took another look. The fight bled out of him.

  “You know me? Yes?” Garvey said.

  “You’re the steam sweep man. Everyone knows you.”

  It was true. In New Alexandria people said that if you built a better chimney sweep the world would beat a path to your door. That was because Morris Garvey had made a fortune by building a better chimney sweep, enough money, in fact, to create the city’s most profitable and best-known business: Morris Garvey Steam Sweeps and Machinations Sundry. But steam-powered, automatic chimney sweeps were only the beginning for Garvey, who had grown Machinations Sundry into every field of mechanical and magical endeavor, garnering an international reputation for embodying the height of modern ingenuity, all before age 30.

  “Then you know my reputation for dealing with alley rats like yourself,” Garvey said.

  “Yes, sir. I do, sir.”

  “Good.” Thudding footsteps warned that the police were approaching fast. “Under no circumstances will you leave this alley with that bag of money. I trust you understand that. But you may still choose where you wind up today, either locked in The Tombs or sitting down to a hot meal and a chance for a future. So make the best decision of your life, now, son. Trust me. Go along with everything I say. Can I count on you?”

  The boy nodded.

  Garvey stifled a laugh at the frantic blend of awe and confusion in the boy’s face. Given the child’s involvement in the ransom pick-up, Garvey suspected this was not the first time his world had been turned upside down in recent days. He only hoped the boy was bright enough to seize the opportunity being offered him.

  “Excellent. What’s your name?” Garvey asked.

  “Andy Parker, sir.”

  “Nice to meet you, Andy.”

  Detective Matheson reached the end of the alley in a thunder of footfalls and a flapping bluster of overcoat.

  “Damnation, Morris, but you run like a jackrabbit,” Matheson said, catching his breath. Then with a sneer at the panting police officers arriving behind him, he added, “At least someone in this lazy urban blight can still stretch their legs, all right. Here I am, a fifty-two year old cowboy outrunning three of the New Alexandria’s finest, and our little rabbit would’ve been down his hole if not for you.” />
  The broad, Texas drawl in Matheson’s voice made everything he said sound much larger than life, even “Homeric” as Garvey had described it the first time the two met. That Matheson had appreciated the reference had secured in an instant the friendship between the two men, who could not be more different. Where Garvey had grown up on the streets of New Alexandria and built a fortune through his wits, intelligence, and hard work, the older Matheson hailed from a cattle ranch in Texas, where he had at times carved out a living as a sheriff, a gunfighter, a blacksmith, a sportswriter, and a even a schoolteacher. He had come north to New Alexandria to study modern police techniques and risen to the top of the city’s police force.

  “The money is secure,” Garvey said. He stood Parker on his feet and dusted him off. “If you would do the honors, Mr. Parker.”

  With only a moment’s thought Parker handed the cash sack over to Matheson. “Not a cent less than when I snatched it, sir.”

  Garvey was pleased to see his snap judgment that Mr. Parker was cleverer than not had been correct.

  “Now, don’t try playing on my good nature, son,” the detective said. “Thievery and ransom aren’t pursuits to be taken lightly, no matter how young you might be. I’ll be sure and tell the judge how you turned this in after you were caught, but I’m afraid you’ll be bedding down in The Tombs tonight.”

  “Detective,” Garvey said. “I can save you a lot of trouble and work in that department. You see, Mr. Parker here is, in fact, a member of my Sundry Troubleshooters. In training, of course, and still wet behind the ears, which is why he didn’t recognize me right off and ran. It was only last week I gave him his first probationary field orders to find mischief, get mixed up in it, and report back to me. He was headed to my offices, directed by his inflated sense of loyalty to turn this money over to me rather than take his chances with your uniformed colleagues. I’m certain he can give us valuable information about who put him up to grabbing the ransom. We both know it was no common street wretch who engineered the theft of Felipe Sandeman’s violin. Consider our good fortune that the perpetrators recruited one of my lads for this exercise.”

  “Our good fortune, you say.” Matheson removed his hat, wiped sweat from his brow, and let out a long breath. “And what say you, young Mr. Parker? Is that how it really is?”

  “Yes, sir,” Parker said. “Like Mr. Garvey tells it.”

  Garvey’s reputation for rescuing lost children was common knowledge in New Alexandria. It was born after he hired many of the young chimney sweeps his steam sweep machines had left jobless. Since then he often recruited capable boys and girls from the streets into his Sundry Troubleshooters, giving them a chance for a future doing everything from lab work to serving as his eyes and ears out and about in the city. More than once Garvey’s Troubleshooters had lent Detective Matheson a helping hand.

  “Really, now?” Matheson said.

  “Most definitely, sir.” Parker dug his dirty hand into a tattered pocket and pulled out a handful of shining coins and a gold pendant on the end of a silver chain. “The coveys what put me up to grabbing the money gave me these, sir. That’s evidence there, right? They gave me my instructions in Pluto’s Kitchen, sir, down where all them cats is running wild. I can show you where it was.”

  “Can you now?”

  “Yes, sir,” Parker said. “I’d be doing my civic duty and living up to the chance Mr. Garvey’s given me.”

  Garvey swallowed another laugh and felt his esteem for Andy Parker double. The boy fell into the role of Troubleshooter as if born to it. He had handed Matheson what amounted to a fortune for a street urchin, exchanging it for a chance at a better life. Mr. Parker, Garvey decided, was even cleverer than he first estimated.

  Matheson took the coins and pendant. “What were you to do with the money?”

  “Keep it, sir,” Parker said. “They said they didn’t need it. If I got away, it was mine for services rendered.”

  “You were right, Dan,” Garvey said. “The thieves have no interest in profit. This was a snipe hunt.”

  “One we couldn’t ignore,” Matheson said. “Sandeman surely runs hot-blooded for a music man, and I believe he’d have popped a gasket if we hadn’t at least tried to buy back his fiddle.”

  “His fiddle,” Garvey said. “Indeed.”

  “Now we know the truth, I like this business much less than when we only had a hunch,” Matheson said. “This here episode was meant to send us chasing the wrong herd. Hell and damnation, the whole morning wasted. And it’s not like I haven’t got my corral cracking already what with the Expo closing and that Egyptian exhibit drawing crowds over at the Nestor Museum.”

  Garvey grasped the detective’s frustration. Time was short. Sandeman was set to perform tomorrow night at the closing of the World Expo, and he refused to play with any violin other than his own. Sandeman was famous not only for his musical skills, but for his stamina in intense performances that often lasted several hours. His concert would close a month-long conference dedicated to improving international relations, and there were rumors of assassination plots afoot against foreign leaders scheduled to attend. The Expo had stoked the city’s underworld activity to a fever pitch in the past weeks, making the violin theft seem too opportune to be mere coincidence.

  “Maybe not wasted,” Garvey said. “What’s that bauble Mr. Parker brought us?”

  Matheson dangled the pendant by its chain in the alley’s misty gloom. It was a finely wrought piece of gold, fashioned with delicate, intertwined flourishes around its edges. Its engraved face depicted the bust of a beautiful, fierce, cat-faced woman dressed in a loose, flowing gown clasped at the shoulders with a Usekh collar: the ancient Egyptian goddess Bast.

  Detective Matheson squinted as he studied the pendant. “Feel as if I’ve seen something like it only the other day. Don’t you?”

  The carving was similar to a cameo on a bracelet worn by the Irish opera singer Maureen McCalla, Felipe Sandeman’s wife. Garvey had noticed it when Matheson introduced him to the couple two nights ago. He reminded the Detective.

  “One cat-headed lady is chance, two a mystery,” Garvey said. “Perhaps Mr. Sandeman has been less than honest with us.”

  “Could be,” Matheson said. He tucked the pendant into a vest pocket, and then he offered his hand to Parker, who stared at it for a second before he shook it. “Well done, Master Parker. You’re off to a dandy start as one of Mr. Garvey’s Troubleshooters. Make sure you stick to the straight an’ narrow, and you ever think about giving real police work a go, you come talk to me, y’hear?”

  The path to Morris Garvey’s laboratory was calculated to give visitors a tour of Machinations Sundry’s most impressive features. It led them through the vast steam sweep factory room, where a hundred men and women assembled and shipped the machines that had made Morris Garvey famous. From there it cut through the railroad and street car engineering studio, then along a corridor that passed open rooms where workers built many of the gadgets and appliances Garvey had invented, and finally up to the company’s rooftop hot-air balloon port, which offered a stunning, 360-degree view of New Alexandria. A brass and glass elevator brought visitors down to Garvey’s lab, which was a complex of indoor and outdoor research stations and offices built within the facility’s expansive courtyard. The Machinations Sundry building occupied a full city block, and Garvey’s lab took up half that space, an area filled with the constant noise of industry and experimentation. By the time Detective Matheson, who knew the route well, guided Felipe Sandeman and Maureen McCalla there, the big Brazilian man was sweating bullets and his delicate wife was dazzled. At the tour’s end, a bearded elevator operator escorted them into the car and down to the laboratory level.

  “Brilliant though Mr. Garvey may be, how can a tinkerer such as he help us?” Sandeman asked while they rode the elevator. “Why do you not have all of New Alexandria’s police force combing the streets and cracking some heads, as they say in the dime novels?”

  �
�Cracking some heads, you say?” Matheson lifted his hat and smoothed his hair. “Well, now, Mr. Sandeman, I’ll surely take that suggestion to heart, right after clue-finding and fingerprinting.”

  The elevator car jolted to a stop and the gate clanked open. The operator led Matheson, Sandeman, and McCalla through the maze of Garvey’s lab. The clang of metal striking metal, the hissing of steam, and the occasional crackle of electricity drowned out Sandeman, who carried on explaining to Matheson—for possibly the hundredth time in two days—how if he did not recover his violin in time to play at the World Expo finale then Argentina and South Africa would almost surely go to war over the Antarctic dispute. The more he talked, the more Sandeman sweated and reddened, becoming almost inarticulate by the time the elevator operator ushered them into Morris Garvey’s office.

  “And where on earth is Mr. Garvey?” Sandeman cried in a burst of spittle-laden breath. “We are international musical stars. He should be here to meet us!”

  “I’m right here, at your service,” Morris Garvey said.

  Detective Matheson sighed in relief. Sandeman and McCalla stared in disbelief at the elevator operator who had seated himself behind Morris Garvey’s desk. Garvey removed his operator’s cap, pulled away the false beard he had stuck to his face, and unbuttoned his uniform jacket.

  “It’s enlightening to hear conversations when people think I’m not present,” Garvey said. “You, Mr. Sandeman, speak far too much for someone with so little to say.”