Shadow Conspiracy

by Phyllis Irene

  The automaton winced and slapped its hands over the imitation ears.

  I remembered the butler at Lord Reedstone’s home deliberately creaking the stairs in an annoying pattern. I remembered my own steam whistle in the café as a precaution to detect artificial beings.

  I had an idea.

  “Wait here Emma. When you can, steal the key!” I dashed off for the orchestra pit.

  The musicians stretched and chatted. A few took sips from flasks. The conductor paced. He paused here and there to make notations on a musical score, to hum a note for a violinist to retune, to pat a flautist on the back for a job well done.

  I wanted that flute. Too many men stood together blocking my access. Instruments are expensive, they’d not give one over to an outsider, despite my connection to Countess Lovelace and Charles Babbage who had put up the production money.

  I tapped my foot to the rhythm the drummer sketched on his instrument.

  As the stagehands moved off with their imitation forest in position, the dancers took their places and technicians hooked a flying harness to the soloist who would dance the role of Myrta, queen of the Wili.

  Carlotta danced among the corps de ballet, having been demoted from the starring role now that the mechanical dancer had been repaired. She scowled, thrusting her toe shoes into the rosin box and grinding the yellow crystals angrily.

  The ballerinas now wore elegant ball gowns made of filmy, green tinged tulle, cut to mid calf, a tad shorter than a fashionable gown, so they wouldn’t trip on the layers. With a wide neckline and puffy short sleeves, they could have worn those costumes to any grand party in the city. Except that each of them had a pair of tiny wings, more tulle stretched over fine wire, attached to the back of the dress.

  They looked exactly like the woodcut in the book of German folklore.

  Lady Ada guided her automaton to the dressing room to change her costume for the second act.

  We had to wait. I needed that dancer on stage, the only place it would be separated from Lady Ada’s protective presence.

  The orchestra and dancers took their places. I edged behind the percussion section, avoiding the man with small hammers poised above the chimes. His concentration riveted upon the conductor and his score. I and the huge kettle drums remained well behind his peripheral vision.

  Act two began. The engines beneath the stage pumped out steam that drifted about the stage in clumps, hot and smelling of the sulfurous coal that spawned it. The sensation was almost like being inside a laundry.

  Myrta in her harness flew across the stage. The audience glimpsed her briefly between two sets. Clever lighting darkened the area above and behind her, making the chain that held her disappear from view. Then she came back the other way, closer to the front, looking more real and substantial. Then a third time near the proscenium and lower until she landed soundlessly on pointe. She took tiny steps that made her seem to float between trees. Behind one of them a stage hand slipped the hook off her harness. The steam thinned.

  The engine continued to throb.

  Hastily I searched what I could see of the backstage area for indications of the lever for the stage manager to release steam when he needed, or when the boiler became too full and tense.

  Emma wandered about, also seeking something.

  A hunting party led by Hillarion the huntsman entered from stage right, lost in the dark woods. He’d delayed the nobles’ sport too long. Midnight approached. They all shivered in dread as the mist thickened and forms moved within the concealing steam. When they hurried off, the hunting party did not notice the mound of a new made grave upstage, far left. A cross with the name Giselle marked it.

  The Wili entered, filling the forest glade. They danced in sad, silent groups, delicate, ethereal ghosts. Their wings fluttered and some of them rose up, flying. The music became as much a part of them as the steps, haunting. Gentle notes soared and played, suggesting new images, giving the dance completion.

  I gasped in awe at the beauty and precision of the dance and the staging, and hoped to view the entire thing uninterrupted on another night. The music became more intense.

  The Wili gathered around Giselle’s grave. The automaton rose up from the grave, dressed as a Wilis, complete with filmy wings. She danced with them, her face as blank and free of emotion as I expected. She didn’t even have the serenity of her sister Wili.

  Then three of the dancers herded Hillarion back into the clearing. Over the next few minutes they forced him to dance with them in ever increasing speed. They pushed him around and around, prodding him to continue when he flagged. Limp and exhausted he gripped his chest and collapsed into a marvellous stage death.

  The satisfaction, almost glee, on the faces of the Wili did not reach the silver shadow dancer. But she lifted her gaze from her own feet to the motionless man. And then she stared upward, into the lingering clouds of steam.

  I saw what she saw, movement. Mysterious shadows, transparent forms that might be the outlines of women.

  The true Wili waited.

  Not much time now.

  Giselle danced her solo of welcome into the sisterhood of the Wili.

  And then Albrecht entered carrying a bouquet of flowers. He searched about, unaware of the Wili or of Giselle. He placed the flowers on her grave and knelt in true regret.

  The Wili pounced upon him.

  The true Wili chose that moment to flow into the open mouth of the automaton. They had found a willing vessel to inhabit, to give them substance and power.

  I struck the huge kettle drum with the padded stick with all my strength. Again and again, I pounded the instrument, setting up a deafening reverberation. The silver dancer stopped her dance in mid step, grabbed her ears and shrieked.

  I dashed up the side steps to the stage.

  “What is going on here?” Lady Ada demanded. She hastened on stage with long, angry strides. Charles Babbage approached from the opposite side of the stage.

  Emma circled around behind Lady Ada. Her nimble fingers barely brushed the apron pocket containing the key.

  The dancer continued to scream in pain.

  I searched the array of levers behind the stage managers’ podium for a clue.

  “Stop that! Give me back the key,” Lady Ada demanded.

  “Oooh,” Emma moaned, swaying between Lady Ada and the automaton. She panted as if she’d laced her corset too tightly, holding the back of her right hand to her forehead. She swayed and moaned some more. “The Wili, they’re here. They’re hungry. Oh so hungry. They need men’s souls. They thirst for vengeance.” She spread her arms so that the shawl with its colorful embroidery of flowers and exotic birds flared out taking on the silhouette of wings.

  A bit over-dramatic but Lady Ada and Babbage hung back.

  Deftly Emma pocketed the golden key inside her bodice. They’d not get it away from her easily.

  The automaton began to revive as the echoing drum beats faded. I had to hurry.

  The levers presented a puzzling array, different coloured handles, different lengths. I’m sure the stage manager knew them all intimately. Where would he logically reach for an emergency bleed of steam in an overheated boiler?

  The third one from the left that stuck out an extra inch from the others. The one with a red silk twist of thread tied to it. The thread matched the fringe on Emma’s fabulous shawl. I leaned all my weight onto it.

  Steam escaped through every vent, hissing and whistling loud enough to wake the dead.

  Or crush a silver dancer.

  It ran right and left, forward and back, circling and tearing at the mechanical ears. It howled. Its knees locked. The spine bent at the hips and froze.

  Lady Ada’s newest creation stared blankly at the floor. Temporarily dead.

  “Give me the key!” Lady Ada demanded of Emma. “I have to reactivate the dancer.” She had to shout to be heard over the whistle.

  “Myrta, Queen of the Wili stole it,” Emma stated, still in her breathy vision voice. She
acted her role so well, I wondered if she truly communicated with a Wilis.

  I had to hurry, before the ghostly spirits overcame the codex and restarted the dancer on their own, with souls that wanted violence. I fixed a hook on the release lever so that the screaming whistle continued to plague us.

  In a flash I was across the stage and fumbling with the back panel of the automaton.

  “No, Magdala,” Lady Ada cried. She ran to my side. Her hands covered mine. “If you remove the codex now, before she’s been properly deactivated you will ruin the internal structures.”

  “Good.” I wrenched open the panel.

  Steam rose up to fill my mouth and nose. Foul stuff smelling of sulphur and rotting wood.

  Was it steam, or the Wili trying to choke me?

  Lady Ada tried to force the panel closed again. I gave her an indelicate shove with my elbow to her mid section. She doubled over with a loud exhalation, too well bred to allow a minor hurt to show as more than surprise.

  In the seconds Lady Ada took to recover, I yanked out the first golden card of the codex to reach my fingers. The sulphurous mist thickened. I coughed it out of my mouth and held my breath. Then I grabbed a second card and a third, throwing them toward Emma who neatly tromped on them, her heel gouging the delicate punch holes that guided pins and gears.

  The mist tried to gag me. Or possess me. I cupped my hands and drove it back inside the automaton and slammed the back panel shut. It jerked and flailed as spirits tried to make the gears and joints move. It began a desperate St Vitus dance of death, rocking off balance, stumbling, circling blindly. Trying to find the music that would lead it back to life.

  With one last jerk back, it toppled, and crashed to the stage, all joints locked. Inert, dead, merely a lump of useless parts.

  I breathed a sigh of relief and fell to my knees, coughing out the last of the Wilis effluvia.

  “What have you done?” Charles Babbage screeched. “You’ve ruined my experiment.”

  “I have no doubt you will try again, to prove that souls can inhabit machines, in hopes of resurrecting your wife and children,” Lady Ada said. She breathed heavily, eyeing me warily. “I presume you have an explanation, Madame Magdala.”

  “Of course I do. A tale best told over a cup of coffee. But until then, I must inform you that Lord Reedstone is proposing a law in the Lords that will classify a soul as property. Theft or involuntary relocation of a soul will be punishable as larceny.”

  Charles Babbage blanched. Lady Ada drew a deep breath and schooled her features, no doubt hoping this would be the end of attempts to bring her depraved father back into this world.

  But it wouldn’t. She and I both knew that.

  “Come, Emma, we will retire to the nearest cafe and allow Madame Carlotta to resume her rightful role of Giselle. She needs to finish this rehearsal, and we need to return to the Book View Café. Tell me have you ever ridden a Pegasus? It’s quite an adventure.”

  “Oh, I look forward to it. When do we leave?”

  Irene Radford and her husband make their home on Mt. Hood in Oregon. They frequently hike on the mountain and in the Columbia River Gorge. They share their home with a psychotic Lilac Point Siamese.

  Irene trained in classical ballet, dancing with the acclaimed pro-am company Ballet du Lac in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

  Join Irene on her Live Journal blog www.livejournal.com/users/rambling_phyl and share her latest hiking adventures, progress reports on her books, and gushing over wildflowers.

  Also available from Book View Café

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  The mind tells the story—but the heart inspires it with dreams of what might be waiting Out There. With evocative stories of lost comrades, alien first contacts, and strange, often unexpected confrontations with evolving science, Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls embraces both our pulp-dream past and cutting-edge future.

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  Stories by: Vonda N. McIntyre, Brenda W. Clough, Katharine Kerr, Judith Tarr, P.R. Frost, Pati Nagle, Madeleine Robins, Nancy Jane Moore, Sarah Zettel, Amy Sterling Casil, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Jennifer Stevenson, Sylvia Kelso, C.L. Anderson, and Irene Radford.

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  Read a Rocket Boy sample story at our website.

  Publication information

  The Shadow Conspiracy

  Tales from the Age of Steam

  Edited by

  Phyllis Irene Radford

  and

  Laura Anne Gilman

  Published by Book View Press

  www.bookviewcafe.com

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