Steampunk Cleopatra

by Thaddeus Thomas

  The list of chosen books and the criteria by which we judged them held little interest for her. We wanted technical texts and, if possible, came with notes from experiments and the construction of units. That all seemed obvious. We had also cataloged a list of rejected works, and these interested her much more. We had little use for history and religion and texts that duplicated work we'd done in their absence. Amani spent much more effort exploring this list, examining our notes, and determining where she could find the books. After little more than an hour, she returned our catalog and deserted the ships’ dock for the library and the books we had selected to burn.

  She went first to a library whose second room was an elaborate puzzle of moving stone blocks. A pile of discarded material littered the floor, and from it, she pulled a scroll. She found a place to sit and read beneath one of the gas lamps. Seven days remained to determine what best deserved to be saved, and she spent her morning studying a document that would never leave the library. It would survive, even if that meant committing it to memory.

  She had once wanted to tell Ma'nakhtuf that, like other countries, we look back to better times, but when those lands were in their glory days, we were already an ancient people looking back to something even greater.

  We were the first, he would have said.

  She could have spoken. Waiting had cost her everything. She would wait no more. Her people were first. Their work deserved to be saved.

  She read.

  In Alexandria, they gloried in their four-hundred-foot lighthouse, but the pyramids of Giza had once given light to the entire empire. They had acted as generators and filled the atmosphere with their power, and cities up and down the Nile drew the power back again through towering obelisks upon which perpetual lightning fell like ropes of fire.

  The metal men and the steam engines were cave tools in comparison. The work of a society scratching its way back to what it had lost.

  Pharaoh Khufu ruled over paradise. Immense craft, lighter than air, flew across the known world. Mechanical armies guarded the fertile lands against marauders. Physicians healed the sick and replaced lost organs and limbs with machines. They foresaw a day when humanity would defeat death itself. Many believed Pharaoh Neferkare was the first immortal, but the gods smote him for his hubris, and ancient Neferkare died. The skies changed. The rains which fed the floods failed. Volcanic ash filled the atmosphere, scattering the power generated by the pyramids and pelting the land with random arcs of fire. They shut down the generators for the first time in centuries and never started them, again.

  When Egypt emerged from the chaos some two hundred years later, the pharaohs had forgotten the heights of their past glory, but the temple scholars never fully lost the old knowledge. When chaos returned to Egypt, the sects protecting that knowledge headed south with those who would join the kingdom of Kush.

  Amani finished the scroll and raised her eyes in contemplation. She sensed motion in the room. She scrambled to her feet and reached for a weapon she did not have.

  Metallic legs moved. Upon them, a thin and weathered woman scurried across tables and debris. With gray hair cut close to her head and eyes sunken behind sharp cheekbones, she was death incarnate. A lipless mouth opened in rage, and she descended upon Amani.

  She was an ancient creature dressed in cowhide and metal. Steam-puffing pistons moved the spindly spider's legs that protruded from her back.

  “The library is my responsibility; its knowledge, my birthright,” Moira hissed. “After seven generations of twenty families, only I remain. We gave up hope of Egypt ever calling us home, but now I can see the purpose of my ancestors fulfilled.” She snatched the scroll from Amani’s hand. “But only if we're ready when the waters rise.”

  Her metal arms tore the scroll into flakes. The flakes drifted to the floor. The floor hid them beneath the shadow of Moira’s feet, which dangled a full cubit above.

  Amani stared, open-mouthed, and trembled.

  Papyrus 5.12

  The wall torches lit even the heights of the dock, and we kept them burning as long as we had strength to work. Even during the day, any light that broached the cave mouth proved either useless or turned our work into silhouette against the sparkling river that ran below.

  The original shipbuilders had used peg-mortise-and-tenon joinery, which complicated repairs. We had stripped away the entire shell, repaired the frame, and then with the frame inverted, reassembled the shell, snapping the boards into place one-by-one. We were half completed with the third shell when we admitted time had run too short and focused on completing just the two.

  The two boats stood upright again, and we worked topside on the masts and decking and underneath on the rudder. Many hours, across many days,said nothing took its toll, and we had stopped only as necessary to rest and eat. We thought nothing of it when Moira climbed down without explanation. She had more than earned whatever break she needed.

  While I sawed and hammered the decking in one boat, Andros applied water-proofing tar to the other.

  “We have the resources now to man the third boat,” Andros said.

  “Moira says...”

  “Moira says a lot. Doesn't mean she's right.”

  I glanced down at the doorway and realized I was afraid. She scared me. I might not have feared for my life, but the fear was undeniable.

  “You said nothing before,” I said, but I understood what had changed. Accepting a thing as a silent truth had proven far easier than to speak it aloud and watch those words break Amani’s heart.

  “One more cycle,” he continued. “We could have all three boats and escape with that many more books.”

  Whatever response I meant to give, Moira silenced when she scurried through the door and up the wall.

  For an instant, I only feared she had overheard our conversation, as she must have. How could she not? Some part of me argued against the rise of emotion, reminding me we had soldiers and she was an old woman. Monstrous appendages, however, were not the true source of our intimidation. She knew the annex and had protected its contents all her life. If she deemed us a threat, we feared not only what she could do to us, but what she would do to keep us from the books. That moment ended, and my fear found a new foundation.

  Amani dangled in Moira’s metallic grip.

  Moira claimed to have lived a hundred years, but even if it were only eighty, she had spent every one of those years with a solitary focus. In the last decade, she had witnessed the destruction of her family. She had never known balance or breadth. There was only this, and she would protect what she knew.

  Moira tilted her head to regard Amani, and in that slight movement, I heard the popping of vertebrae. “The entire purpose of our being here was to keep this information away from the Egyptians.”

  Amani opened her mouth to speak, but her eyes fixed on the space below and no sound emerged.

  The distance below made me dizzy, and for the first time in weeks, I feared I might fall from the boat and break my neck in the shallow water below. It was not only the distance that surged through me, but the sight of Amani suspended helplessly above it. Her eyes spoke to mine. Maybe. Maybe the terror I saw in her eyes was not hers, but mine reflected.

  “Amani alone found the evidence that brought us to Cyprus,” I said. “She is the reason your work will not rot, lost and forgotten, failed in its purpose.”

  Moira shook her head. “What you do with the books when we get to Alexandria will be up to the Pharaoh, but this is my domain. She will not go near the books.”

  I explained Amani’s long journey to get to this point.

  “You're a fool,” Moira snapped, interrupting me. “An Egyptian's loyalty is divided. We've seen it before. I won't let it happen again.”

  “No,” Amani said, “you haven't.”

  Moira curled a lip. “Haven't what?”

  “Seen it before,” Amani said.

  Then I saw clearly that something beyond fear in Amani’s eyes. In the clutches of the beast
, she spoke.

  “You know the stories of your ancestors, but you know nothing of today's Alexandria. I was born there and spent most my life in the palace. You're foreign-born and dependent upon us for a hero's welcome. On this material, there are only two experts known to Pharaoh, and I'm one of them. If you want her trust, you'd best learn to earn mine.”

  Moira reared back. “You're a child.”

  “Will you call Pharaoh a child when you stand before her?” Amani asked.

  They stared at each other, Amani as firm and unbending as if they held each other above the expanse, each holding the other’s life in her hands. Moira tossed her into the boat with me. The support beams groaned against the violence.

  “No books,” Moira said. “I found her reading.”

  I pulled Amani to me and checked her for injuries. “That's her job.”

  “She was reading the discarded books.”

  “The history of my people,” Amani said, “and of the knowledge we bring home.”

  Moira climbed into the boat with us, looming over us both. The rafters creaked beneath our weight. “I won’t have it.”

  “She destroyed the manuscript,” Amani said, still arguing even as Moira’s deadly arms gripped the hull, inches away. “My people deserve to know what Egypt was like in its first millennium.”

  I tilted Amani's face so that she looked into my eyes. “Your people can never know.”

  I hated the sorrow I saw in her eyes.

  “What you saw in that book,” I said, “no Pharaoh will allow to be shared.”

  A tear streamed back into her hair. “Why?”

  “Did you finish the scroll?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you know the answer. Even the Egyptian pharaohs hid that knowledge from their people.”

  “I don't understand,” she said.

  “You don't want to understand, but you do. To be ruled, a people must believe themselves satisfied, to think themselves born into the eternal fate of their people, and if ever they realized their ancestors lived a different and better life, it must be only by small measures. They must hope to see the day their leaders achieve such greatness for them and their children. We can never hope to understand the accomplishments of your ancestors, let alone replicate them. Nothing they’ve experimented with here touches what your people once had, and if you want them to rejoice in what we bring them, we can’t tell them what they’re denied. We can give them their history. History is what we say it is. What we cannot give them is the truth.”

  Amani pulled away, only to find herself at eye level with Moira’s feet.

  “She can work the boats,” Moira said, “nothing more.”

  Amani covered her face and said nothing. Satisfied, Moira crawled away to work alongside Andros.

  I tried to hold Amani and comfort her. She pulled away, and I returned to my work.

  Papyrus 5.13

  I watched Amani try to help with the work on the boats, and she looked like she wanted to say something whenever our eyes met. She hesitated, glanced over at the other boat where Moira worked, and stayed silent. It continued like that until evening, and then Moira continued working as the rest of us journeyed topside.

  Andros and I carried containers of water and coal. Amani stormed ahead. She said nothing as she climbed and cleared the lip while we were still raising our supplies by rope and pulley.

  She peered down at us and called out, “Are you going to let her do this? Those books will burn.”

  We tested our ropes and began the climb. “Focus on the books we’ll save.”

  “You’d have me become my own oppressor. I’d do better to deal with Cato. He wouldn’t destroy the work of my people.” She glanced back, and I knew she had remembered where she stood, near the heart of Theodotus’s camp.

  “Give me time to reach the surface,” I said, “and we’ll talk.”

  She disappeared from view. I called out, but she gave no answer. When we reached the surface, she was gone. We had not been far enough behind for her to have cleared the lake. She must have run up the hill and into the woods.

  Despite the danger, I called out her name, once. She made no reply, but Theodotus emerged from his camp to investigate.

  “You want to tell everybody where we are?” he asked.

  “Amani ran off.” I pointed to the hills. “She’s angry, and I don’t want her doing anything stupid. Make sure your men monitor her.”

  He nodded and left to give his orders.

  Reluctantly, Andros and I returned to our purpose and walked across the lake and built a fire on the bank where we could dry our legs and wait. Night fell, and we were cold, despite the season. I worried about Amani.

  The metal men's version of the old pegs-and-ropes, their programming, had not given them the skill of stealth. The earth rattled as two metal men stomped through the underbrush and came to a halt before us.

  We waited, listening for the third. The night was quiet.

  Andros was the first to say what we both knew to be true. “It's burned through its fuel.” He grabbed a water bag, emptied most of the coal, and threw the rest of the sack over his shoulder. “I'll go.”

  “Help me take care of the others, and I’ll come with you.”

  “I need some time to myself, and I need to see the house, one last time. If I don’t go now, I never will.”

  “Do you regret what we did?” I asked.

  He interwove his fingers with mine.

  “I’m so afraid I’ll drive you away,” I said.

  He met me with soft lips and brush of his beard.

  I listened to the sound of his leaving and then filled the reservoirs and coal chutes in the metal men. They walked off, following the orders of their programming, and I settled into the grass by the fire.

  It did not occur to me to think that Amani watched from the woods on the hill on the other side of the lake. I had little idea that her heart nurtured its first love. My heaviness blinded me to the heartbreak our kiss had engendered.

  I sat by the fire, and only then did I look back to the woods to which Amani had run. I awoke the next morning, alone.

  I walked across the lake and checked the camp. No one was there. I climbed down into the crevasse and stood in the bay, but only Moira worked on the boats. She scolded me for leaving her all the work. The days were slipping by.

  I returned to the temple and signaled for Theodotus to join me. His men kept a perimeter. They would pass on the word. I waited, and he came.

  “She’s in the woods,” he said. “We’ve found signs of her, and she couldn’t escape without passing through the higher grasslands, which we would have seen.”

  “Twenty-two men can’t find one twelve-year-old girl?”

  “She’ll come out when she’s ready,” he said.

  I wanted to call out to her, but I had already taken that risk once. If Theodotus was right, then she was watching me.

  “I’m pulling two of your men for boat duty,” I said.

  “There will leave gaps in the perimeter. We’ll have no idea where Amani is.”

  “We have no idea now,” I said, “but I know how to change that.”

  With Theodotus’s men at work, I screwed up the courage to ask Moira for the device I needed, and, though I expected an argument, she led me to the divination machine. She hated when I called it that, but with it, I could find the machine men.

  The device was a clay pot that held a solution in which were suspended an iron rod and a copper tube. Resting atop the rod and the tube was something that resembled the astronomical computer Amani had used at the choosing ceremony four years earlier. Once the settings matched those for the particular metal man I wanted, the machines sensed invisible waves sent out from the metal man, and its readouts adjusted themselves, directing the user in which way he should go.

  I walked an hour into the forest, used the device again, and backtracked ten minutes. The metal man stood still, as it would for much of its existence. It detect
ed our presence, determined we belonged here, and continued to stand still, waiting for those who would come and who did not belong.

  This was the unit that had not returned to the lake at the programmed time, and I first checked if the reservoir and chute. They were full. Andros had found it.

  I popped off a plate on the back of the machine’s low-profile head, revealing a multitude of tiny nobs. When Andros stopped Theodotus’s search party, Amani had been the first he programmed the metal men to ignore. It had sensed her and kept those readings associated with the first free knob, and I knew which one that would have been.

  I stopped and listened to the chattering of the woods. The rhythm of its noises usually soothed me, but now my thoughts were on Amani. The woods could not so easily settle me now.

  If I took the next step, Amani would not make it out of the woods. The machine man would try not to harm her, but it bothered me, this thing I meant to do.

  With a twist of the nob, I cleared the settings. If Amani came within range of its sensors, the metal man would stop her. She had no reason to expect any different. She did not know I had excluded her from its sensors.

  The logic held. Why did I feel so guilty?

  I knelt to change the settings on the divination device, but where I stood at that moment was the closest to Andros’s village I would ever be. If I meant to go, this was the time.

  No, Andros wanted to be alone. I had to respect that. I adjusted the settings for the next metal man and followed the readings in a new direction.

  Papyrus 5.14

  Amani pressed herself deeper into the underbrush as the morning sun dappled the slope. Voices and footsteps passed her by. She watched the soldiers, studying their movements, but she held onto no hope that she could slip by them. If she did, she could not say what she meant to do. Andros had kept her from the machine room. Moira had ripped her out of the library, and I had kissed Andros.