Alice's Adventures in Steamland: The Clockwork Goddess

by Wol-vriey

  Alice nodded. “If I meet her as an ambassador.”

  Lord Busybody reached into his hat and pulled out two letters, holding them out for Alice’s inspection.

  “They’re the same,” she said, perplexed.

  “Not so.” He pointed to the slightly thicker last ‘A’ of ‘Anna’ in the address of one envelope. It was a tiny difference, a slight smudge, like the name hadn’t been blotted quickly enough. “That’s the good one,” he said. He then tapped the other. “This one’s poisoned. I’ve soaked the paper in a toxin which will be absorbed through the skin of whoever handles it. It kills in a matter of days. Anna will appear to be alright at first, but then she’ll fall sick and expire a week later, by which time you should be long gone.”

  Alice nodded and he continued speaking.

  “The danger, of course, is that you might not be allowed in to see her, which renders the letter irrelevant. In that case, just hand over the non-poisonous one to whoever will take it. And then . . .”

  He shrugged. “And then the rest is up to you.”

  Alice nodded. “How do I get there?”

  “My private airship. I’ve already ordered it stocked and provisioned for a three month trip, although the journey to Texas shouldn’t take more than two weeks.”

  “I can’t fly an airship,” Alice pointed out.

  “ NO PROBLEM,” Crank said, “I AM GOING WITH YOU. I AM PROGRAMED TO HANDLE THE NAVIGATIONAL SYSTEMS.”

  “He’s also an excellent shot,” Lord Busybody said. “There are weapons aboard the airship, in addition to the substantial firepower of its cannons. You shouldn’t need them, though. We’ve already mapped out the safest route to Dallas. You’re avoiding Kansas completely, but still, you’ll need to be careful.”

  Alice nodded, feeling oddly optimistic about their chances.

  ***

  They retired for lunch. It was then that Alice’s mood darkened.

  New York Times. The Ripper had struck again.

  “He murdered two women this time. The bastard . . .”

  “ YOU MUST REMEMBER HE HAD A NIGHT OFF THE OTHER DAY,” Crank reasoned. “HE’S AVERAGED A GIRL EACH NIGHT OVER THE PAST MONTH, SO HE LIKELY WISHED TO MAKE UP HIS QUOTA.”

  Alice stared coldly at the robot. “If we’re to get along on this journey we’re undertaking, please do refrain from making anymore such jokes.”

  “ JOKES.”

  Lord Busybody chuckled as he removed his spectacles and polished them with a napkin. “Now now, Alice, calm down,” he said.

  Alice thought a while. “This Ripper sicko, he likes to kill people, right?”

  Lord Busybody replaced his spectacles on his nose. “That much is obvious. Why do you ask?”

  “The bastard’s a New York native, isn’t he? I think I’ll recruit him into my army; take him along with us on our trip!”

  Lord Busybody stared at her. “Well, I suppose the city’s prostitutes would be grateful, but remember this is a very dangerous man we’re talking about here. One who gets off on hurting women like yourself. First though, you need to catch him, and then . . . how would you persuade him to go along, even if you did manage to catch him?”

  Alice smirked. “Catching him will be easy – leave that bit to me. I’ll just need to borrow Crank for a few hours. As for persuading him? Just give him a shot of the same aging serum you gave me. You’ll see how patriotic the sick bastard is when his only other option is to be geriatric for the next fifty years.”

  Lord Busybody fixed Alice with a searching gaze. “Are you certain you realize how dangerous this is, how easily it could go wrong for you?”

  She grinned. “Don’t worry; I’ll come back alive.”

  He nodded resignedly. “Okay then. We’d best get started . . .”

  Chapter 3

  Meet the Ripper

  The night was deathly cold.

  On a street off Broadway, Alice Sin stood beneath a streetlamp on the corner near a run-down theatre, waiting and watching.

  She wasn’t alone. Beneath other gas lights lingered other working girls, each dressed in cheap furs, each marking out her territory like a dog, scenting her chosen lamppost with cheap floral perfume promising illicit pleasures better left unspoken.

  The Ripper had made this very place his prowling ground. Alice wondered how he’d escaped detection for so long. She wondered also about the other girls beneath the lampposts, waiting for the Ripper like lambs destined for the chopping block.

  Alice was now temporarily twenty-two years old again.

  “He likes young meat, not old women,” she’d pointed out to Lord Busybody. “What does it matter, anyway? You said yourself that without the permanent cure, the effects of the counter-shots wear off in a month, tops.”

  Unable to confess to Alice that he simply liked having a nicer version of Marie around, Lord Busybody consented to give her the required counter-shots.

  “Psssst!” called Susan, a black prostitute whose acquaintance Alice had made that night. “They’re taking better care of us now. The cops are about.”

  Alice saw it was true – several March hares were hopping down the street towards them.

  “What now?” Alice asked, drawing her thick coat tight around her otherwise scantily clad form. It wouldn’t do to get busted for soliciting. “We run or what?”

  Susan laughed, showing perfect white teeth. “You are new here. Chicago must be the absolute backwoods for prostitution.” She waved at the oncoming police-hares. “Just look professional and act polite. The hares don’t care how much sex we have – they’re after that Ripper character.”

  “That makes me feel so much safer,” Alice said.

  “Wish I could say the same,” Susan said. “One of the girls he killed last week was a friend of mine, Alicia. Nicest girl you ever met, share her gram of coke with you anytime.” She spat on a patch of grass. “How I wish I could get my black hands on that Ripper’s balls, so I could rip them right off!”

  “You echo my thoughts exactly,” Alice replied.

  Two March hares hopped up to them and paused. “Good evening, ladies of the night,” one said politely.

  “Good evening sir Hares,” Alice and Susan both replied. Both hares wore dark blue police jackets with copper buttons that glimmered in the lamplight. Each of them carried a blackjack and a holstered revolver at its waist.

  One of the hares looked closely at Alice, its pink eyes seeming to open her skull and peer inside. “I haven’t seen you out here before, Miss.”

  “She’s newly in from Chicago,” Susan said. “Had to run from some gangster trouble.”

  Their whiskers twitched with sympathy. “Yes, Chicago’s a terrible town. Nothing like New York.”

  “Any leads on the Ripper?” Alice asked.

  Both hares were instantly on alert. They pulled large watches from their pockets to check the time. “Ten o’clock!” they cried in unison. “Oh dear dear dear! We’re late late late!” They gaped at each other in horror. “Oh how will we ever catch the Ripper, if we aren’t on time?”

  Without so much as a backwards glance at either Alice or Susan, both hares hopped on down the street and out of sight.

  “That’s why they never catch the Ripper,” Susan said despondently. “They’re always in such a hurry that they never even bother to ask if we’ve seen anything . . .”

  Alice caught the implied suggestion. “Has anyone seen anything?”

  Susan sighed. “He has a beard; some girls say a mustache as well. Those of us who were last to see his victims agree on that. Others say his scarf hid too much of his face for them to be sure. He also had a funny accent, like he was Russian or Chinese, someone who couldn’t speak English very well.”

  Alice stored those details. “What color was his hair?”

  Susan smiled at her. “Why don’t you join the police? You’d do a better job finding him than the March hares have, that’s for damn sure.” She mused a moment. “Brown, red, ginger
. Definitely a wig, though. Nobody has hair that many colors.”

  Alice was intrigued. “Anything else?”

  Susan’s black faced creased as she racked her brains. “Some girls say he had a limp, some say not.” Her eyes focused. “There’s one other detail – all of them claim he had a briefcase. A pigskin case.”

  Alice was rather confused. “Let me understand this. Everyone knows the Ripper has a mustache and beard, wears a scarf, has crazy-colored hair, and carries a briefcase, and yet he still keeps picking off you girls one by one? Are you all brain-dead or something?”

  Susan sighed. “It’s not that. We’ve got to make a living, haven’t we?”

  Alice stared her down. “How? As corpses? Fertilizer in the boneyard?”

  Susan looked miserable. She pointed across the street to where a gentleman was alighting from a trap. “He could be the Ripper, couldn’t he? He’s got a mustache and briefcase.” She then pointed at another man with a walking stick, also mustached and carrying a briefcase. “He could be the Ripper as well. We’ve got to eat, and if we turned away every mustache and briefcase we saw, we’d all starve to death for sure.”

  Alice had no reply to that. Susan was right.

  The Ripper’s disguise (if he was wearing one) was perfect. He looked like half the men in New York City.

  “Hey look,” she told Susan. “A customer’s coming. No mustache or beard.”

  Susan preened herself and moved back into her cone of streetlight, waiting for the slim black man in the purple suit approaching.

  “Where you going, Alice?”

  “Back in a moment – just gotta take a pee.”

  She ran down the street and into the dark alley where Crank sat waiting.

  “No sign of him,” she said.

  “ MAYBE I WAS WRONG; MAYBE THIS RIPPER WAS STORING VIOLENCE AGAINST THE FUTURE, NOT COMPENSATING FOR THE PAST. WE SHOULD RETURN HOME FOR NOW; TRY AGAIN TOMORROW, WHEN HE’S LIKELY TO STRIKE AGAIN.”

  “No,” Alice said firmly. “We don’t go home without him!”

  ***

  By the time Alice got back, Susan had left with her customer.

  One by one the other prostitutes all paired off with male and female customers and exited their show-cones of streetlight. Alice was soon left all alone with the police-hares hopping excitedly up and down the street, searching in vain for the Ripper.

  It’s insane that a police force can be this inefficient, Alice thought.

  March hares made fantastic soldiers, because they couldn’t be scared – Not true. The only thing a March hare was ever scared of was BEING LATE. To a lesser degree, the same held true for white rabbits as well, only they weren’t so neurotic about it, never panicking until they really had something to panic over. They were more like humans in that regard.

  But March hares? Merely suggest to one that it wasn’t on time, and it instantly became an incapacitated heap of quivering lagomorph.

  Both New York and Texan army commands had neutralized all anti-hare enemy propaganda in this regard by explaining to the hares that one was NEVER late for war, that like birth and death, conflict was something that occurred only when and if you arrived able to participate in it.

  ***

  “Are you waiting for someone, miss?”

  Alice realized she’d forgotten herself. She turned to look at the speaker.

  It was the Ripper all right. Red hair, beard and mustache, pigskin briefcase certain to contain his gutting sickle.

  Alice fought the fear threatening to paralyze her.

  “Waiting for someone?” the Ripper repeated. He was peering at her expectantly.

  Alice nodded, met his soft blue eyes. She smiled seductively. “I could be baby, maybe even you, if you’ll show me a good time.”

  Susan had left out one detail about the Ripper – how muscular he was. In his suit he looked like a wrestler. Despite the gun in her purse and the bottle of chloroform, even with Crank waiting in the alley, Alice suddenly felt much less sure of herself.

  “I’d certainly like to show you a good time,” the Ripper said, speaking softly in that odd accent of his. He held out his hand to her. “Where would you like to go?”

  Alice stepped out from beneath the streetlight and slipped her arm through his. She pointed down the street, past the alley where Crank sat waiting. “There’s a nice bar down that way, and after a few drinks we’ll go back to your flat.”

  “Sounds like a nice plan for an evening . . .” the Ripper agreed.

  They walked arm in arm down the street.

  ***

  The plan was simple:

  “Don’t endanger yourself in any way,” Lord Busybody had cautioned Alice. “Lead him past the alleyway so Crank can jump him. Either that or chloroform the bastard and bring him back here. The gun is only to be used as a last resort.”

  As if to spare Crank the trouble of dragging him in, the Ripper suddenly shoved Alice into the very alley the robot was crouched hidden in. Her handbag caught on a piece of masonry, ripped, and clattered to the paving stones.

  With both the gun and the chloroform inaccessible to her, it was up to Crank to save Alice now.

  “Okay!” she growled at the Ripper. “We’ll do it here then. You should have said you were in a hurry. It’ll cost you more, though.”

  The Ripper pushed her down onto the cold hard ground. He placed his briefcase beside her and opened it. “Now we’re going to have some fun, little lady.”

  “What you got in there? Oils?”

  Alice was having a hard time maintaining her cool front. Where the hell was Crank? She’d left him right over . . .

  In a dark corner of the alley, she spied the robot slumped against the wall like a pile of rubbish, immobile. She then recalled the time of his last winding, realizing that he must’ve run down. In her and Lord Busybody’s rushed preparations for tonight, they’d both forgotten to give Crank an extra wind-up.

  Possessed by her survival instinct, Alice leapt up and ran over to the robot. Hidden in the shadows, she started winding his crank as fast as her hands would go.

  “You cannot run and you cannot hide,” the Ripper called after Alice. “I must do what I must do, and what I must do is you.”

  “I’m coming my darling,” Alice said, “Just taking a quick pee. You know how bladders are in cold weather.”

  “Oh,” the Ripper said. “Sorry for being so ungentlemanly. Take your time darling. Eternity can wait . . .”

  To give credence to her excuse, Alice pulled aside her panties and let out a stream of urine, so the Ripper could hear it. Peeing was easy – the wonder was how she’d not already done so involuntarily.

  While urinating, she continued relentlessly winding up Crank. Come on wake up you metalhead son-of-a-bitch!

  Alice peered out from their hiding place at the Ripper. She’d certainly made no mistake. The hulking beast of a man stood silhouetted in the glare of the street lights, his sickle gleaming murderously in his hand.

  Right behind the Ripper, March hares hopped frenetically up and down the street. Searching for him in plain sight, Alice thought disgustedly. No wonder the bastard’s been killing a girl a night!

  Crank’s crank finally cranked to a halt. Alice let go of it. The robot’s eye-dials instantly flipped to their central ‘full’ positions.

  “ THANKS,” he said. “ NOW PLEASE STOP URINATING ON ME – I’LL RUST.”

  Alice collapsed in relief, only to realize she’d sat down in a pool of her own piss.

  “Aren’t you done yet?” the Ripper called out petulantly. “You really shouldn’t drink so much before work, you know.”

  “Sorry darling,” she called back. “You’re not my first customer tonight. Last guy made me drink six pints of beer with him, and you know how bartenders water their drinks. I’m almost done. Be with you in a minute.”

  “Okay then.”

  She knelt close to Crank and whispered in his metal ear. “How do we d
o this now? I’ve lost my bag . . .”

  “ JUST WALK UP TO HIM LIKE NOTHING’S WRONG. I’LL BE RIGHT BEHIND YOU.”

  Alice peeked out at the sickle again, gleaming evilly in the lamplight. “Uh uh, nothing doing!”

  “ TRUST ME,” Crank said. “ I’M A LOT FASTER THAN I LOOK.”

  Deciding that she had nothing to lose except her very life, Alice walked out to meet the Ripper.

  The man was smiling a sadistic grin which, coupled with his red beard and hair, made him look just like the devil incarnate. He immediately advanced upon her.

  Alice cringed away from him. “I thought you wanted to have some fun . . .”

  “This is fun,” the Ripper said, raising his sickle up high. His eyes gleamed like spotlights. “The sort of fun you cunts deserve!”

  I’m dead, Alice thought as the blade descended. Here I come, daddy.

  Suddenly it was if she weren’t even there anymore, but standing back a ways, while the Ripper’s sickle bounced off Crank’s head, flew through the air, and clattered to the ground behind him.

  The Ripper stood staring at the robot in disbelief, gripping his wrist and trying to shake the shock out of it. Then he turned to flee.

  Alice stuck out a foot to trip him. “And just where in the bloody hell do you fucking think you’re going?”

  The Ripper tumbled to the ground. A moment later he was laid out cold by a blow from Crank’s brass fist.

  The robot slung the unconscious murderer over his shoulder and headed for the alley’s far end, where a horse and carriage were waiting to transport them to the ferry for Busybody mansion.

  Alice retrieved her purse, collected the Ripper’s sickle, and after packing it back into its briefcase, set off after the robot.

  Chapter 4

  Meet the Real Ripper

  “Impossible!” Lord Busybody thundered.

  Only it wasn’t. Stripped of his disguise – fake beard, moustache and hair, padded suit and fake Russian accent – the Ripper was none other than Prince Jackson.

  Alice had already puked twice since discovering the Ripper’s true identity, but in retrospect she realized it made perfect sense – Prince Jackson had already shown himself to be both emotionally unstable and very violent. And, of course, he had major issues with women.