Power Under Pressure (The Society of Steam)

by Andrew P. Mayer

The material of the dress was surprisingly simple and elegant, and it only took Sarah another instant to realize that it had once been hers. “My last good dress,” she whispered to herself. The girl had stolen it from her!

  The metal man turned, and Sarah could see Tom’s eyes clearly. The way the painted eyes were facing it appeared as if he was leering directly at Viola’s scandalous outfit. But the eyes saw nothing—they were simply a painted reminder of something he did not actually have. “I appreciate your . . . opinion,” the mechanical man said to Viola, “but I have no need for any . . . compliments.”

  Viola laughed and ran a finger down the side of his mask. “You are such an innocent, Tom. Like a child.”

  “I am . . . older than you are, I think.”

  “No. You were born yesterday. I saw it.”

  “Reborn. But I have existed in many . . . bodies since the professor first . . . created me.”

  Realizing that being caught eavesdropping by Tom or Viola would be far worse than the embarrassment of simply interrupting, Sarah had every intention of moving forward and revealing herself, but just as she was about to step out from behind the old boiler, the sun broke through the clouds. The light struck Tom’s rebuilt body, and she was once again transfixed.

  The mechanical man glittered in the sunlight, the wire wrapping him reflecting it in waves. Even from this distance she could make out places where whirls and patterns lay trapped underneath the weaving of metal that crossed him. In some places he seemed positively ethereal, the wire shimmering as he moved. It gave the suggestion of being some kind of living flesh while at the same time being nothing of the sort.

  She began to take another step forward, but then witnessed something so shocking that she found herself once again frozen in place.

  “You should see yourself, metal man,” Viola said, “you’re an angel.” She stretched out her arms in a languid, almost-sensual manner, and draped them at either side of Tom’s neck. After a moment she brought them together behind his head, her wrists loosely piled on top of one another. They hung limply, in a way that any woman of candor and class would have considered lurid intent. It was wanton, and—in a word that leapt unbidden and unwanted from Sarah’s subconscious—whorish. “You may be the most perfect man I’ve ever seen.”

  As she stood there, her shock mounting, Sarah realized that she was failing spectacularly at not being an eavesdropper. Still, she decided once again to interrupt the conversation.

  But as Sarah shifted her weight to take a step in their direction, Viola moved as well, pressing her rouged lips fully against Tom’s own painted mouth.

  Sarah felt shocked, despite the fact that she knew it was quite impossible for Tom to respond to the girl’s amorous advances. And yet, what did she really know about this new Tom’s feelings? He wasn’t human to begin with, and Viola’s kiss would have seemed shocking no matter where it was planted. Could it stir the feelings of a machine, as well?

  Sarah knew she should have felt nothing but pity for the girl—Viola was clearly a madwoman. But to see an act performed with such licentiousness, and to see it practiced on Tom, shot a bolt of . . . what? Anger? It ran from her heart straight down to her knees.

  Whatever the feeling was, it caused Sarah to clench her right hand into a fist. Closing her eyes had been her intention, but Sarah found herself taking in every moment of the sordid scene before her.

  The wind shifted slightly, carrying Viola’s voice directly to Sarah’s ears, along with the scent of the river. Her nose wrinkled from them both. “Did you like that?”

  “It was . . . warm.” Tom sat unmoving as Viola planted a second kiss on his face, leaving another smudge of red face paint below his right eye. “I know that . . . people can find such . . . activities . . . pleasant.”

  Was he stuttering more than usual?

  “But that’s other people. It wasn’t you.”

  “This is . . . true.”

  Viola interlaced her fingers and leaned backwards, using Tom’s neck for support. “You have the heart of an artist.”

  “I have the heart of a . . . machine.”

  “I’ve held your heart in my hand.”

  Sarah felt a wave of nausea as she heard those words. She had clutched Tom’s heart to her chest for months. Viola knew nothing of Tom’s heart! Part of her wanted to scream at the top of her lungs just to put a stop to this insipid conversation.

  “How did it . . . feel?” Tom asked.

  “Magical,” Viola purred in reply. “Like holding a miracle.”

  “It does not feel like . . . magic, inside of me.”

  They were both silent for a moment, and Viola took the opportunity to kiss him again, although this time with less fervor. “Why do you talk like that?”

  Tom’s head tilted slightly to the left. “Talk like . . . what?”

  Viola laughed. “Talk like . . .” she let the pause linger. “This,” she finished, in a slightly mocking mimicry of Tom’s musical monotone.

  Underneath Sarah’s anger—it was most definitely anger now—Sarah found herself marveling at the girl’s ability to turn the smallest phrase into a bold seduction.

  “No one has ever . . . asked me that . . . before.”

  “Well,” she said, placing her hands against his chest, “I’m asking you now.”

  There was a pause. “It is not . . . intentional. If I could I would . . . speak like you. But sometimes it takes . . . time for the words to . . . form.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I will try to . . . explain.” Tom’s right hand rose to Viola’s head. “Your words come from . . . here.”

  Viola nodded. “So they tell me.”

  He took Viola’s fingers into his own. Bringing her arm down, he pressed her hand against his chest. Whether Sarah wanted to admit it or not, and she most certainly did not, there was no denying that what she was feeling now was worse than anger. It was jealousy, and it felt hot and deep. “My words come from my . . . heart.”

  “All men say that, but they’re usually about two feet too high.” Viola gave a noise that was almost a giggle. “But in your case, I suppose I can believe you.”

  Tom ignored the crude innuendo. “But my . . . heart must also . . . beat, so sometimes when I am trying to . . . remember something, or say something in . . . particular, the words take . . . longer to come.”

  Sarah wondered why it was that she had never thought about Tom’s pauses. She supposed that it was because she had never wanted to think of Tom as any more inhuman than she had to. She had never wanted Tom to know that she considered him different.

  What Sarah had avoided out of fear, Viola, true to her nature, had simply done without hesitation. Sarah had never considered herself to be a jealous person, but perhaps that was only because up until now she had never truly had anyone to be jealous of. For an instant Sarah again considered charging forward, but she knew that the opportunity to reveal her presence without embarrassment had passed.

  Instead she began backing away silently, hoping that she might escape unseen. She craned her head to see where she could safely place her next step, and iron and bone collided, sending up a loud ringing that was impossible to ignore. She had been undone the moment she had attempted to be stealthy . . .

  Viola turned to her, eyes staring out from underneath the metal mask. Now that she could see it fully, Sarah realized that the Italian girl had been right in covering her face. With the damage concealed under metal and paint, Viola had regained much of the exotic beauty that had been stolen away by the scars.

  But, having discovered Sarah watching, the Italian girl didn’t move her hand, or back away from Tom in any way. Instead she simply smiled, with a look that hinted that perhaps she had known that Sarah had been there all along. Either way, the look of satisfaction gave Sarah a powerful urge to walk up and smack Viola’s horrible mask completely away.

  She was halfway to unleashing that attack when she heard Tom speak. “Sarah?” Tom didn’t turn to face
her.

  Once again Viola spoke before Sarah could, “Yes, Tom, it’s her. How long were you spying on us, rich girl?” She finally pulled her hand off of Tom’s bare chest and took a step back from the metal man.

  Sarah felt the heat of an involuntary blush coming down over her cheeks, but she forged ahead, ignoring Viola’s taunts. “It’s me, Tom. How are you?”

  “I am . . . well. I am . . . glad you have come to see me.”

  “It took you long enough,” Viola said with a sneer.

  “Please . . . Viola,” Tom said. “Sarah is my . . . friend.”

  Sarah stepped forward to take a closer look at this new Automaton. Almost everything about him was different than the last time that she had seen him, and yet somehow she knew with certainty that this was Tom—or mostly Tom.

  The last time she had seen him in a truly human form—unbeaten, unbroken, and fully formed—had been after his battle with Nathaniel at the Darby house. Even then he had been badly scorched, his face shattered. But he had still seemed repairable—hurt, but not destroyed. Then Eschaton had torn him to pieces.

  It all seemed long ago now. It had taken so much to bring him back. If Tom wasn’t entirely the same being he had been then, Sarah could safely say the same was true for her, as well.

  Sarah desperately wanted to take another step forward, this time to embrace her friend, but Viola was again standing in the way.

  Almost as if sensing her distress, Tom moved toward her, forcing the Italian girl to get out of the way. Sarah smiled as she wrapped her arms around his metal body, expecting to feel the solid weight of him, the same way she had when she had said good-bye to him on the doctor’s doorstep that cold winter’s morning. But he was different now; taller and more ethereal than he had been before. The taut wire that he had wrapped around himself gave slightly under her embrace. As he lifted his arms to hug her she realized that his new form wasn’t just an illusion. There was something more truly living about him than there had been before.

  “It is good to see you again, Tom. I . . .” She felt the walls she had worked so hard to build up inside of herself fall away in the moment she said his name. Just for an instant she felt as if she was once again the naive girl that she had been before all of this had begun. Sarah felt the stinging pressure of tears in her eyes, threatening to drag her down into another torrent of emotion. But she would not let herself fall that far so easily, especially in front of Emilio’s sister.

  “I am . . . glad you are here,” Tom said. “Viola had said that you were . . . worried about me.”

  “I’m sure she said a lot of things about me.”

  Viola’s voice didn’t hide her anger, “You wrong me, rich girl. I am not here to steal your metal man away from you.”

  “You’ll just kiss him and steal my clothes.”

  She could see Viola’s smile through her veil. “You’ve borrowed so many of our things: my brother, my home,” the Italian girl said, frowning. “I figured you wouldn’t mind so much if I borrow something of yours.”

  “And now you want to be a Paragon as well?” Sarah snapped.

  “Not a Paragon. Nothing like you, rich girl,” she said with derisive snort of a laugh. “Do you know the Commedia dell’Arte?”

  Sarah shook her head. The term sounded vaguely familiar, but if she had previously been familiar with it, she no longer remembered the lesson.

  “It is the characters of Italian theater. La Signora is the concubine—the Harlot. I call myself that. It’s very good, I think, but it is no Paragon.”

  Sarah couldn’t deny that there was some poetry to the girl giving herself an identity pulled from the stage, and it explained the outlandish rouge on her lips.

  At the same time, the whole notion of Viola as any kind of costumed heroine was utterly ridiculous. The last time she had been face-to-face with Eschaton’s henchmen the Italian girl had barely managed to escape with her life, and now she wanted to be an adventurer.

  And yet Viola was now as much of a veteran as Sarah was: not only battle-scarred, but willing and eager to throw herself back into the fight. “It’s ridiculous,” she muttered, forcing herself to stop entertaining the idea that this mad girl might somehow be helpful to her cause.

  “You think so?” Viola said, pulling out an object from her belt. “But you still haven’t seen the best part.” She flicked it open with a metallic snap: an oversized hand-fan.

  As it caught the sunlight, the device revealed itself to be made entirely of metal. The leaves clanked as they fluttered, but it seemed to be doing an effective job of blowing air into her face, and the lacy veil fluttered seductively enough.

  Sarah let out a sigh. “Are you planning to allure your enemies to death?”

  “No. It’s much better than that.” Viola spun her hand around, and Sarah heard the telltale sound of fortified steam being released.

  From the tips of each rib popped out a small blade, each one an inch long. They were small, but menacing enough that Sarah took an unconscious step back. “Impressive, no?” the girl said, waving the deadly device in front of her face.

  Sarah wanted to say no, but in her retreat she had already given herself away. “I suppose it is . . .”

  “Now look.” Viola flipped her hand over again, holding the fan in front of her. She snapped her wrist and something escaped from the fan in a blur. It let out a sharp “tank” as it slammed into the old boiler that Sarah had used to hide behind. The projectile pierced the rusting iron, leaving behind a small hole that daylight poured through.

  In the revealing glow, Sarah could see now that another blade was already rising up to take its place, fed by a line that was attached to her arm. The design of it was like a lady’s version of the weapon that had been wielded by her father—or, now that she thought of it, the Bomb Lance.

  Sarah tried to control her temper as she spoke. It would certainly do no good to shout at a woman wielding a self-reloading blade gun, no matter how it had been dressed up. “You didn’t make this, did you, Viola?”

  “I . . . created it,” Tom said, taking a step forward.

  “Based on my idea,” Viola said, clearly impressed with her own ingenuity.

  “Tom, what were you thinking?”

  “If we are going to stop . . . Eschaton, we will need . . . allies. And they will need to be . . . armed.”

  From the few times she had heard her father discussing tactics (for the benefit of Nathaniel), he had defined an ally as someone who you could trust not to intentionally put a bullet into your back. Sadly, Sarah had a hard time believing that she wouldn’t find herself on the receiving end of an “accident” from Viola’s new weapon. “You should have come to me before . . .”

  Snapping her fan shut, Viola stepped forward. “And who says you run anything, rich girl?”

  “Back to this again?” But Sarah had to admit that for all her concerns it was good to see that reinventing herself as a heroine had restored the Italian girl’s confidence. “I didn’t know you fancied yourself as the leader, Viola?”

  The girl pondered that for a moment. As one second stretched into several, Sarah considered trying to disarm the girl of her deadly weapon. She hoped that Tom might help her as well, although there was no way to be sure, especially since he had helped to create it in the first place. If there was any hope of rectifying their relationship she would have to find a better way of working things out with Viola than fighting with her.

  It was Tom’s voice that cut through the silence, “Sarah is the . . . daughter of a . . . Paragon. She is the leader . . . of the . . . Society of Steam.”

  Sarah could see the faint outline of Viola’s lips pursing under her veil. “Did you come up with that name, rich girl?”

  Sarah nodded. Up until now it had been half a joke—something to talk about until she could come up with a real name. But having heard Tom say it, perhaps it wasn’t such a bad name after all.

  “It’s ridiculous,” Viola said, snapping her fan back open. “It
sounds like a group of old ladies making tea.”

  “Well, if you don’t have a better one . . .”

  “The People’s Guardians,” the Italian girl said firmly.

  Sarah barked out a laugh, and then covered her mouth. She could only imagine the look on her father’s face if he had lived to hear that her daughter was leading a group of adventurers describing themselves as communists. Although it probably wasn’t too far off from what he had thought of her, anyway.

  Viola rolled her eyes under the mask. “I knew the rich girl wouldn’t like it.”

  “I’m sorry Viola, but our job is to save the world from villains, not to change the world to make it the way we think it should be.”

  “And who chooses the people who we are supposed to shoot with our fancy guns?”

  “We shoot the people trying to hurt other people,” Sarah said, although she wasn’t sure that was exactly right.

  “Darby,” Tom said, “always told me that the . . . villains were the ones who thought that . . . murder was . . . justified to get their way.”

  “Then maybe we go after the government, and stop the wars . . .” The sarcasm in her tone had reached new levels.

  “‘The new world,’” Tom suddenly chimed in, speaking without his usual stutter, “‘will no longer be built on fear and war, or any of the products of man’s hatred and the rising tide of humanity. It is a world that will be built on nobler pursuits.’”

  “That’s right, Tom.” Viola said. “You see, rich girl? Not everyone thinks I am so foolish.”

  “Who said that, Tom?” Sarah asked him.

  “It was something Lord . . . Eschaton told me, just before he smashed me to . . . pieces.”

  Viola stood silently for a second, her hands clenched tightly at her sides. When she spoke again her voice was raised to a shout. “You Paragons are all idiots! All the power you have and all the pain you cause, and you use it all to fight your rich-man wars.” She pointed her fan accusingly—threateningly—toward Sarah’s face. “What is the good of having all this power if we don’t do anything with it?”

  Sarah felt her righteous anger melt away—the question was one she had once asked her father. Asking those questions had been what led her to meet Sir Dennis Darby in the first place.