Power Under Pressure (The Society of Steam)

by Andrew P. Mayer

  Le Voyageur turned to him and scowled, looking at the German as if the misfire might have somehow been his fault. “Merde! Zis wotten tub will be ze death of me! Go downstairs and fix zis!”

  Grüsser started back down the ladder.

  Darby and he had originally built the boat together, and while it might not have been perfect in every way, it was still a thing of beauty. And when he had captained it, Grüsser had felt special: for just a moment he had been a man capable of something that no other living human had mastered.

  He looked around at the mess of the engine, seeking the source of the malfunction, but there was nothing apparent.

  “What awe you doing down zere, Prussian? Do I have to wet you choke to death befowe I can get wowk out of you?” It was well past time to wind the suit again, but he knew better than to ask the old man to do it. The last time he had actually mentioned it to the Frenchman, the old man had waited until the last possible moment, waiting until Grüsser was lying on the ground, half-unconscious and gasping like a fish.

  In the endless weeks since he had been handed over to the Frenchman to act as his—what exactly? Henchman? Lackey?—Grüsser had come to understand that the man was incapable of issuing any type of motivation but punishment. He had come to accept that as enough—not that he had any choice in the matter. “Ich bin—”

  “Angwaise, angwaise!” the old man shouted at him from up above and slapped his hand against the wheel to emphasize the point. “You know I cannot understand your Gewman gwunting!”

  Grüsser shouted upward, “I am tryink, trying, to make zis ship do vhat you vant, Herr Voyageur, but ist nicht . . . not . . . doing it.” Taking another look, he finally saw something that looked like it might be a broken device, although with the Frenchman’s mad designs it was often hard to tell.

  Meanwhile, the tighter the collar grew, the more confused he became. How the old man expected him to do such delicate work while he was half- strangled was a mystery to him.

  “Let me see, let me see,” the old man said, and slid down the ladder, landing against the wooden floorboards with a thunk.

  Stomping in with his usual twisted walk, he practically shoved Grüsser out of the way so that he could peer down into the mechanism. “What have you done? It is a mess in hewe.” He leaned forward to look more closely at one of the devices, his head practically disappearing into the machinery.

  If Grüsser had been a braver man he would have taken the opportunity to grab le Voyageur and throw him headfirst into the engine. But then what? Wait while the Chronal Suit finished its work of snapping off his head, or—worse yet—drown in what had once been his own vehicle?

  What other men thought of as cowardice Grüsser thought of as simple self-preservation. Once again he wondered if simple survival was worth all the sacrifices he had made. And yet, here he was, still alive to contemplate it.

  “So . . .” the old man said, his voice amplified by the space where he had stuck his head. “You wiww be pweased to know that this is not youw fawlt.” A hand popped up from the chugging machine, holding a thick brass gear. It had been scored and scorched, clearly not up to the task for which it had been pressed into service.

  The Prussian obediently took it from the old man’s clutches, pinching the object firmly between his fingers before lifting it away. “Ten millimeter Jaw,” the Frenchman said with clear conviction.

  Grüsser found the toolbox, opened it, and looked for the wrench. When he spotted it, he lifted it up and spun it around so that the working end was facing away from him. With a firm but steady grip he laid it against the old man’s withered claw, holding it with firm pressure until the ancient fingers had wrapped themselves around the spanner and taken it away.

  It had taken him weeks to learn precisely how the Frenchman had wanted objects given to him and how he wanted them removed. The lessons had been hard won, with every failure earning him a stinging whack from the old man’s cane.

  Grüsser was certain that it had been a task he had been intended to fail, and he took some pride in the fact that he had earned some grudging respect. He had always been handy with tools, even as a child, and for all his failings at sport and learning that had so devastated his parents, it had been his fascination with machines that had not only given him an edge over other students, but allowed him to rise so quickly within the military.

  He had little of the true genius that Darby had, but not every man needed to be a virtuoso to play the violin, and in a world where technology was changing so quickly, being very good was more than good enough.

  More than that, his unique moral failings put him into conflict with society as a whole. As a young man he had held very little interest for what the world wanted him to do. He was always happiest when tinkering with his machines. But unlike Darby and the other tinkerers he had met, he had little or no interest in actually making anything. Simply being around machines had been enough for him.

  But as he grew older and rose up the chain, he found that even his interest in mechanics had begun to wane. And in the world of Teutonic values, Grüsser had been labeled as a practitioner of the greatest Prussian sin: laziness.

  He had been saved by war. As Chancellor Bismarck’s victories grew and his armies marched across Europe, Grüsser quickly found that virtues and vices meant less and less. The only things that were important on the battlefield were devotion and victory.

  Grüsser had dreaded the idea of combat, but he had been thrown into war and discovered—much to his own surprise—that he was a man who felt at home on a battlefield. Where most men seemed to be concerned with nothing but their own mortality, it was in a world of death that he often felt the most alive. Even though his skills were not usually ones that might put a man onto the front lines, he had taken every opportunity to stay within the line of fire. And his self-destructive urge had given him a reputation for bravery that he knew he did not deserve.

  Not that he didn’t deserve to die. His desires were monstrous, even to him. But they were also uncontrollable. And in the end it had been his penchant for young women (and men) that had finally put an end to his (at least to him) meteoric career. The fact was, no one had even seemed to mind his moral peccadilloes very much—at first. There were certainly worse perversions to be witnessed in war. But then one of his superior’s daughters had made an accusation, and he suddenly found himself branded with every evil imaginable. The fact that her charges were true only pushed Grüsser further into despair.

  And for all his supposed heroism on the field of battle, when he was off it, his first (and only) instinct when faced with danger was simply to run. Grüsser knew that he should have felt more chastened, both by what had occurred, and by his decision to flee from justice to America.

  But new beginnings were what this country had always been about, and weren’t all men guilty of something, in the end?

  The Frenchman popped his head up from the machine and stared at him. “What awe you doing, you wazy oaf?”

  “Vaiting for you.”

  The Frenchman frowned, but was too far away to do anything. “This could have been vewwy bad, and it would have been youw fauwt.” He rapped the machinery lightly with the wrench and it responded with an ominous ticking sound. “But I think I have fixed it fow now—if you wiww just tighten this.”

  Grüsser nodded. After weeks of working side by side with the Frenchman he had learned that le Voyageur was not only a mad visionary, he was also hopeless without a second pair of hands.

  Every bolt on every engine needed Grüsser to tighten it. Every screw on every drive shaft needed his eyes to make sure that they were true.

  Without that effort, nothing the Frenchman created could actually work, and despite the fact that Grüsser’s days in the Chronal Suit were torture, he had managed to find a sense of accomplishment in succeeding as the old man’s assistant. It was a feeling that he hadn’t had for a very long time.

  “Take a wook at my wowk, Pwussian,” the old man said, waving his hand
vaguely at the mechanics he had just been messing with. Handing Grüsser the wrench, he turned and grabbed the ladder. “You might weawn somezing.” Le Voyageur pulled himself out of the machinery, giving Grüsser the chance to step in.

  Leaning down, the Prussian looked into the device and nodded. Once again the old man had indeed managed to find the problem, but his attempt to “fix” it had left things in worse condition than when he started.

  He ducked down and began tightening bolts with the wrench.

  “What awe you doing down thewe?” came the voice from up above. “Don’t damage anything, you oaf!” He knew that the Frenchman wanted to get moving again, but despite his taunts the man was no fool.

  Moving the ship without Grüsser’s okay would be very dangerous, even if his method of obtaining that assent was through bullying and criticism.

  The Prussian was about to speak when he felt the tick of the Chronal Suit. The collar around his neck tightened, and the only sound that escaped from his throat was a gasping croak.

  The Frenchman shoved his head down through hatch. “Gwüssew! I asked you what awe you up to?”

  “I . . .” he gulped, his Adam’s apple rasping against the metal band at his throat. “I am trying.”

  “Perhawps you need a winding?” From any other man it would have sounded like concern, but le Voyageur was incapable of it.

  Grüsser knew better than to respond with any kind of agreement, even if it was only a squeak, or a choked nod. Asking the Frenchman for help would only reduce his chances of receiving some relief before he (once again) fell to the ground. Even then, the old man was as likely to accuse him of playing for his sympathies as he was to actually help in any way.

  One of the first things he had learned over the last few months with le Voyageur was that if the old man had ever had any pity in him at all, age had robbed him of it.

  Grüsser stood stone-faced, staring up at le Voyageur, breathing heavily through his nose as he tried to draw in enough air to stay standing. It would be a few minutes now before the suit clicked over to the next notch. When that happened, he knew, he would truly begin to choke.

  He tried not to panic, but in spite of his efforts his mind played out the events that were about to occur. Starved of oxygen, he would drop to the floor, helpless, gasping for breath like a fish out of water. That was no small irony for a man who had called himself the Submersible.

  But the Chronal Suit was hardly his first brush with suffocation. He had come close to drowning a number of times: first when his enemies had managed to pierce his ship; a second time when one of the rubber seals had given way from the shock of a nearby explosion, and the sub had begun to fill with the foul liquid of the Hudson River. Darby and he had installed a pump after that, although after le Voyageur’s modifications he was no longer certain that it would work if tested again.

  Unlike many other forms of fear, it seemed that exposure to drowning did not lessen over time. In fact, Grüsser found that after each event he was a little more sensitive to it than he had been before, although so far he had always managed to overcome his terror and return to the water.

  But the inevitable attacks of Eschaton’s sadistic device had made everything far worse. Not only was he constantly under threat of choking, but the key to his continued existence now rested in the hands of a madman who actually enjoyed watching him suffer as he clutched at his collar, gasping for another desperate breath.

  But if the old man had almost no compassion, at least he was not murderous. Although Grüsser had fallen unconscious numerous times, at least the Frenchman had returned him to consciousness after every event.

  But constantly living in the shadow of another round of life or death was wearing on Grüsser rapidly. The Prussian was beginning to wonder if he might not be better off if le Voyageur simply let the suit finish carrying out its work, allowing him to drift off to whatever afterworld the devil had constructed for lazy, broken Prussians.

  He continued to stare at the twisted old man, waiting for him to respond to his distress. It was a game they played daily, and Grüsser’s only chance at winning an early reprieve was to keep his face a calm mask devoid of emotion.

  Luckily such skills had always been a necessary part of his life back in Prussia, although he’d never been particularly adept. Even at his most stern, his parents had always been able to read him like a book.

  Mercifully, le Voyageur had no such ability. The utter inability of the French to hide their passions had always been their greatest weakness. To think that Napoleon had managed to defeat the Austrian army on multiple occasions! Clearly Corsicans were of a different breed.

  Le Voyageur lifted one of his wild, furry eyebrows, the tangle of white fuzz arching. “Well Gwüssew,” he said matter-of-factly, “once again you will see zat I am not all anger and evil. Wet us wewind youw suit.”

  A sense of relief descended over Grüsser as the old man began to stomp down the ladder. He hadn’t been looking forward to the next click.

  Pulling out his keys with one hand, le Voyageur gestured with the fingers of his other. “Awight then, tuwn awound.”

  Grüsser spun obediently in place, pulling down his jacket as he did so. Had it been so long ago that he had been a free man? Now his life ran to the tune of clockwork gears in a box on his back, each tick bringing him one small step closer to death.

  He felt the metal object sliding in against his back and locking into place.

  He waited as patiently as he could, the device ticking away as the old man slowly twisted the key around and around.

  In Grüsser’s estimation, the cruelest aspect of Eschaton’s invention was how slowly it released its grip on the victim as it was rewound. He supposed that in the gray man’s mind that was part of the charm of its time-bending properties, and sitting here, waiting for the key to release him as the suit clicked away, he had to admit that it did feel like an eternity.

  But this time, before the procedure could be completed, something hard slammed against the side of the ship, toppling both men to their knees.

  As they fell to the ground he heard the old man curse through the roaring sound of something scraping up against the ship. The collar seemed to grab him even tighter as he crashed down into the floorboards, forcing him to cough and sputter through the band around his neck.

  For a moment the world seemed to swim, and the ship tilted at a sharp angle, sliding both men down against the wall. Le Voyageur tumbled down onto him, sending fresh waves of pain out from where the device’s shackles bit into his skin. The Frenchman stank of perfume and age, like some old parchment found in a long-forgotten attic.

  “Sacwe Dieu!” the Frenchman cried out, an edge of suffering in his voice that Grüsser found himself pleased to hear.

  “Get off of me,” Grüsser choked, and heaved upward, tipping the old man onto the floor. As soon as he’d done it he knew he would regret it, but his panic had gotten the better of him.

  The boat freed itself and bobbed back to center, throwing them both back down toward the center of the floor.

  Grüsser fell to his knees as the old man scrambled back up the ladder to see what had happened.

  “Help me,” he shouted after the Frenchman.

  “Hewp yousewf, you ungwateful monstewe.”

  The Frenchman put a single foot on the rung and turned back to look. Grüsser rolled upwards. He was already feeling winded, and as he gasped for breath he regretted every sausage that he had not been strong enough to say no to. He looked into the old man’s eyes.

  “Don’t wook at me wike that! I dwopped the key somewhewe in this sewer.” What he saw reflected behind the old man’s glasses was not pity, but need. “Find it, bwing it to me, and I wiww wind you up.”

  Grüsser nodded and rolled himself over. Despite the small arc lights that Darby had rigged up to provide lighting inside the confined space, Grüsser couldn’t see the key anywhere. He crawled across the floor, sweeping his hands back and forth.

  As he di
d so, he prayed that it had not fallen through a gap in the floor and dropped down into the bowels of the ship. What lay underneath was a maze of pipes and machinery, the already-complicated array made even more so by the Frenchman’s attempts at “fixing” Darby’s work.

  Grüsser craned his neck, attempting to find some small bit of room beneath his Adam’s apple. But the suit had, as he feared, come close to reaching the level at which his exertions would drive him to unconsciousness. His vision was already swimming, blackness forming around the edges. It wouldn’t be long now before he would simply drop to the ground.

  As he slid forward, trying to find a position that might at least be somewhat comfortable to die in, his leg brushed against the key.

  He reached down and picked it up. As he held it, Grüsser realized that he had never actually seen the key before—it had always been held in someone else’s hands, and used only behind his back.

  Looking at it face on, he saw that from the front it made the shape of a small clock, the hands inside set at fifteen minutes to midnight.

  The object of his salvation in hand, Grüsser dragged himself over to the foot of the ladder. The world was still hazy, but he seemed to have settled into some form of stable consciousness.

  Despite his incapacitated state, he pulled himself up the rungs, one at a time. As he rose he found his thoughts becoming clearer, as if they were purified through his desperation and pain.

  He would rather die than live his life on the edge of suffocation, working with his enemies to bring about the very apocalypse that he and the others had so long fought against.

  In some ways he had always been the least of the Paragons, but now he was also the last of them, and if he was going to die, he would make sure that he didn’t die alone.

  As he pulled himself up through the hatch he saw le Voyageur staring out at the horizon, a set of opera glasses pressed up against the old man’s eyes, allowing him to look more closely at whatever it was that had captured his attention on the Brooklyn shore.

  “Help me,” Grüsser croaked out, his hand lifting up the key and holding it out in front of him. He could only imagine what a pathetic sight he must have been, begging for his survival.