Power Under Pressure (The Society of Steam)

by Andrew P. Mayer

  For reasons beyond Lord Eschaton’s comprehension, the endless hammering of the world made some men more devious while it pounded the guile out of others.

  And although Donny was a vicious, dangerous man who delighted in causing pain to his fellow humans, he was still an innocent—somehow as unaware of his own capacity for destruction as he was anyone else’s. “Do you want to be purified?” Eschaton asked him. “If you could, would you become like me?”

  “Oh, yeth thir,” Donny replied, his eyes shining. “I’d want that more than anything in the world.”

  He grabbed the boy’s right arm with his left hand. His intention had been to be gentle, but now that he felt the soft flesh between his fingers Eschaton couldn’t help but squeeze into it until he could feel the fragile bones underneath. The pain he was causing the boy was clear on Donny’s face, and it seemed to be reducing his own agony. “And if you had it, what would you do with it?”

  The boy was clearly torn between trying to free himself and attempting to answer the question. “Whatever you’d want me to, thir.”

  He knew that underneath his obedient exterior the boy was a vicious killer, and he was growing tired of being lied to. “That’s not an answer. If I gave you strength and invulnerability, what would you do with it?”

  “I’d, I’d . . .” Donny seemed desperate now, clearly thinking that somehow the right answer would make his torture stop. “Pleathe, thir . . .”

  Somehow, even as he tried to lighten his touch, Eschaton knew that he was tightening his grip. “My lord,” Eschaton said with a snarl. He had wanted to unlock the secret to his power, and now he was beginning to see that perhaps it was the suffering of others that gave him strength.

  “Pleathe, my lord,” Donny parroted back, clearly desperate. Tears were leaking from his eyes now, the confusion and pain blending into a form of desperation that Eschaton found both comforting and pitiable.

  “Answer the question.”

  “I’d take whatever I wanted—whatever I wanted!” he screamed out. The combination of forced honesty and pained desperation made Donny’s words blend together into almost incomprehensible gibberish, but Eschaton still understood.

  He threw the boy to the ground.

  Donny grabbed his arm and rubbed the red flesh. By tomorrow it would be badly bruised. “Wath that the wrong anthwer, my lord?”

  Donny was no different than the others. He would turn on him the moment he gained genuine power. “The question is, is it the only answer?”

  “I don’t underthtand.” The boy looked up at him with the eyes of a wounded puppy.

  “Clearly not. But you will soon enough.” He pulled himself out of the pew. Something had definitely given him renewed strength. “Now get out.”

  The boy scrambled away.

  “Why’d you go off on the boy like that? He ain’t done nothing to ya.” He looked up to see Doctor Dynamite staring up at him from his wheelchair.

  The man had been badly broken during his battle with the Automaton. That he hadn’t died was a testament to the powers of modern medicine, but he would never walk again.

  Eschaton had to admit that he was desperately curious to see what the smoke would do to his broken body. “I’m tired of having my actions questioned by children.”

  This time it was Jack Knife’s broken accent that cut him off. “I think he’s decided that a world full of Paragons might not be such a good idea after all.”

  Eschaton’s first instinct was to reach out and slap the man for his impudence, but Jack Knife was a very different kettle of fish from Donny. While they might both have been children of the streets, it would be a very foolish mistake to underestimate Jack’s intelligence. That his men were clearly probing for weakness meant that now was not the time to lash out in anger.

  “You’re half-right, Jack,” Eschaton said. It was true that the pecking order could be a factor of luck, but over time things settled out one way or another for a reason. There could be little doubt why Jack was the leader, and Donny was the lackey. “But in a new world I had imagined that men would learn to be equals.”

  The crippled cowboy let out a sarcastic laugh. “Everyone’s always half-right, but what makes you equal is whether or not you have the gumption to back it up.”

  Eschaton nodded, wondering just how much dynamite the Doctor still had hidden in his chair. For a moment he considered taking the chance of finding out. Instead he turned and faced the other man. “And what would you do with your power if I gave it to you, Jack?”

  “Dunno. I don’t have it yet.” Jack said, staring him straight in the eye. “But once you’ve given it to me, you can be the first to find out.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “I thought you were going to make us all equals?” Doc Dynamite replied without missing a beat.

  “You never believed in my vision of a more equitable world, anyway. Why are you all so worried about it now?”

  Jack spoke next. “Maybe all men aren’t bastards, but I think it only takes a whiff of power to make them think they are.” The look on the man’s razor sharp face was an unhappy one. “Personally I don’t think a world of more powerful bastards would be a wonderful thing.”

  “That’s because you both don’t have the good sense ta believe in anything,” Murphy interrupted in his brogue. “All men have a touch of the divine, and you want to make it real.” Eschaton could see the devotion in the old man’s eyes. “Don’t listen to him, Eschaton,” the Irishman said, “Ya can still make us all better.”

  “Religious nonsense,” Jack said with a scowl. “I never seen God shoot a bullet or take one, but he still gets all the credit when it happens to somebody else.”

  For a moment Eschaton could smell the scent of his defeat in the air. It reeked of rotting flesh and burning wood. “What you’re missing,” he replied, “is that what happened here today may, on the balance of it, have been a good thing.”

  “Yeah,” said Doc Dynamite with sarcasm. “It’s always a good day when they burn down your house.”

  “Well, then,” Eschaton replied, “You’ll be pleased to hear that I have opened my eyes.”

  “And what are they seeing now?” Jack asked.

  Eschaton let out a rumbling chuckle. “Well, my clever boy, I’ve seen that while I can use the fortified smoke to transform men into more powerful creatures, the strength alone will not give them the vision that they need to use it with good sense.”

  “I could have told you that months ago and saved you the trouble,” Jack grumbled.

  Eschaton narrowed his eyes. “And if I asked you months ago, if you would have turned traitor for Anubis, would you have told me that, too?”

  Jack opened his mouth to reply, but only a sputtering “I, I didn’t . . .” came out.

  Now it was Doc Dynamite’s turn to laugh. “What’s the matter Jack?”

  “I didn’t turn traitor . . .” he sputtered.

  Eschaton had to admit that catching him like that made him feel good, although it might not have been the most prudent use of his information.

  “Don’t worry,” the gray man said, taking a step toward him. “I won’t hold it against you. It was my fault for letting him join us in the first place.” Once again he felt better for the attack.

  Jack stared down at the floor. “You know I’ve been on your side since the start,” he said in a tone just barely above a mumble. “But you always knew the jackal wasn’t one of us, so why did you let him hang around?”

  Eschaton surveyed the damaged Hall. Nathaniel’s powers had done an effective job of burning down his pulpit. Parts of the structure were still glowing, the smoke being pulled up through the hole in the ceiling where the two men had escaped. “Why did I treat him like one of the Children, you mean?” Perhaps it was a fitting metaphor. “I thought he might open his eyes.”

  “Me too,” Jack said as he followed him down the ramp. “Besides I like him, and I think you do, too.”

  “Normally, Jack, I wouldn�
��t feel the need to explain myself,” he said, walking down the ramp toward the unmoving metal husk in the middle of the floor, “but given the events of the day, perhaps I’ll indulge you.”

  “Only if it pleases you, my lord,” the thin man said. But it was hard to hold his cutting tone against him. Outside of occasional moments of shock and surprise, Eschaton wondered if Jack could be genuine even if he tried. His disdain for authority clearly reached down to his bones.

  “I wanted to see if he could change,” Eschaton told him.

  “And instead he changed Jack,” Doc Dynamite noted.

  “Maybe you just don’t know me that well,” Jack snapped back.

  “Or maybe you don’t know yourself as well as you think,” Murphy said, stomping toward the stage.

  “Perhaps you could both stop bickering for a moment.” Eschaton hobbled slightly as he reached the burned remains of the Shell. The twisted armor lay in a pile by the smashed glass cage, looking like a puppet that had suddenly lost its strings.

  “This is a right mess we have here,” Murphy said as he came up behind Eschaton. “But I can’t say that I’m sorry ta see the monster gone.”

  “He gave us all a bit of the creeps,” Jack said. “And he was starting to smell worse, if that’s possible.”

  “And yet he should be mourned by all of us.” After the birth of the Shell, Eschaton had spent days poring over Darby’s machinery, but there was little left to give him insight into the cause of the transformation. “He was loyal to the end, and Hughes helped me to discover secrets that I didn’t even know existed.

  “He won’t be forgotten.” Eschaton reached out a foot and prodded the dead thing’s armor. “When this is done we’ll build a statue in his honor.”

  “Why don’t we just turn him into one?” Jack said with a snigger.

  “The man was not only one of my Children, but he was also the only true Paragon.” Eschaton raised his voice as he spoke. “The only one of them to see the potential in the future that I offered.” The shining metal had been scorched by the heat, and stained where the fluids of the remnants of humanity it had once contained had been boiled away.

  “It didn’t end well for him though, did it?” There was clearly a genuine tone of regret in the Irishman’s voice.

  “It’s not just how it ends, though, is it, Murphy? Eli also sacrificed his life, as did so many others who shall go unmourned.”

  Eschaton had always known there would be sacrifice. It was the destruction of the man he had been in that smoke-filled chamber so many years ago that had begun his journey to becoming what he was today. Terrence Harrington, the man he once was, was now as dead and buried as any of the others who had been sacrificed to the smoke.

  He had believed that the power of that rebirth would be enough to open the eyes of any man, but Nathaniel had rejected his rejuvenation. “No matter,” he whispered to himself, bending over toward the remains. If the new world demanded a leader, he would find a way to rise to the challenge.

  He stretched out and touched the Shell’s arm. The steel limb was lifeless but still warm in his grasp.

  Then, with a shock, he realized that where his fingers touched the Shell’s body there was something like a buzzing underneath his hand. For a moment he thought he might be imagining it, but looking down he could clearly see that the white energy underneath his skin was travelling down his arm, pooling together where it touched metal.

  As he lifted his hand away, his flesh seemed to almost cling to the metal, as if it had somehow been joined to it. He could see the flashes of small sparks jumping between his fingers and the metal as he peeled it off. It made him feel strange, but somehow energized as well.

  Eschaton stood up and rubbed his hands together, feeling the energy dissipate back across his body. “Jack, come here.”

  The thin man walked up next to him. “What can I do for you, my lord?”

  “Touch that and tell me what you feel.”

  Jack was clearly nervous being so near to the Shell’s body. “I’m a marksman by nature—more about distance than touching,” he said, taking a step back.

  “A coward, more like,” the broken cowboy said with a chuckle.

  “I’m not asking,” Eschaton said, and shoved Jack forward. Murphy walked closer as well, obviously curious but not wanting to be pressed into actually being involved.

  “All right then.” Jack knelt down slowly, folding himself down until he looked like a poorly made chair. He grimaced as he reached out his hand, and then slowly pressed his finger against the metal arm.

  “What do you feel?” Eschaton asked.

  “It’s warm.”

  “Anything else?”

  Jack held his finger there for a moment. “No, lord. Just warm.” He looked up and raised his eyebrows. “Can I stop now?”

  Eschaton nodded, and Jack rose, wiping his finger against his pants like there might be something stuck to it.

  “All right, all of you, stand back.” Eschaton didn’t need to ask twice. Both men took the opportunity to walk back up the ramp and find some small measure of cover behind the rows of pews. Doc Dynamite rolled away as well, still shy after his last encounter with one of Darby’s creations.

  Eschaton knew that he was once again playing with forces he didn’t yet fully understand. Whatever process Darby had used on the Shell’s body, it had taken place on a level he had yet to comprehend. “If only I had that damn heart,” he muttered out loud.

  Still, he wasn’t without his own resources, and Eschaton wouldn’t be cowed by a mechanical ghost. Raising his arm into the air, he began to concentrate energy into it, filling it up until it was pure white. The effort of it drained him, and the pain behind his eyes grew. Someone would need to suffer soon.

  He brought the energized limb slowly down toward the Shell’s broken body. By the time his fingers were a foot away, the energy was leaping off his skin and into the metal. It took all his strength to keep his hand from dropping, as if his limb were becoming heavier the closer it came to the strange steel. He almost yelped as a chunk of it leapt upward into his hand.

  There was a sensation of overwhelming vertigo. He could feel the energy being drawn out of his body and into the steel.

  Strangest of all, he could feel his muscles relax, drained of the tension that had been a constant part of his physiology from the moment he had first bathed in fortified smoke.

  And in that moment everything was peaceful. But when Eschaton opened his eyes he saw that he had fallen to the floor. Jack and Murphy were standing over him, their eyes wide.

  From somewhere nearby Eschaton heard a tapping sound. He jerked himself up and was surprised by what he saw when he looked down at his hands. While the flesh was still gray, it contained a tone of human pink he hadn’t seen in years. He pressed his right thumb into the palm of his left hand and was astounded to see the flesh actually yield to the pressure.

  The tapping started up again, and he jerked his head toward the source of the sound. “Incredible.” What was making the noise was the jerking body of the Shell. Somehow, contact with the electricity produced by his body had reanimated it.

  He heard Murphy’s voice. “Are you all right, lord?”

  The Irishman was wild-eyed, clearly almost as shocked to see Eschaton on the floor as he had been by the twitching metal corpse. Eschaton began to pull himself up, but it seemed that the metal had drawn more out of him than he realized. “Don’t just stand there gawping! Help me up!”

  Jack ran up, and each man grabbed an arm, lifting Eschaton back onto his feet. As he moved away the steel cadaver slowly returned to rest, the remains of the energy that powered its ghoulish exertions being drained away.

  “What happened?” Jack asked him, taking a tentative step toward the now utterly inanimate shell.

  “Darby did it,” Eschaton said, the realization of what had just occurred falling into place in his head even as he spoke the name out loud.

  “What do you mean?” Murphy asked. “I
killed him.”

  “Touch it now,” Eschaton said, giving Jack another shove.

  “Not bloody likely,” the thin man said, moving himself both out of Eschaton’s reach and farther away from Hughes’s corpse.

  “I’ll do it if you won’t,” Murphy said, stepping forward and reaching out. As he neared the metal arm, a spark leapt up from the steel to his hand. “Dammit,” he said, yanking his hand back.

  “Better you than me,” Jack said with a laugh.

  “Residue of the energy it pulled from me.” Eschaton took a step closer and kneeled down, careful not to get too close.

  “I don’t understand,” Murphy said. “Is it dead or not?”

  “The man is dead.” Eschaton nodded to himself. “Darby was no fool. While he may have banished me for my experiments, he was clearly unable to kill off his own curiosity about my discovery—the possibility of binding the power of fortified smoke to a living creature.”

  He dropped his head and laughed. Even though it had been necessary to kill the man, it was hard not to feel some sadness at his loss—especially now that he could see his flaws. “I was focused on finding ways to bind the power of smoke to human flesh so that I could create a better man.” Eschaton knelt down and brought his hand close enough to the metal skin that he could feel it calling out to him again, attempting to drag the power out of his flesh. “But Darby went in the other direction.”

  He saw Jack taking a step closer, the light of dawning recognition in his eyes. “You mean that metal, don’t you? What did he do?”

  “He somehow fused the power of fortified steam directly into the steel,” Eschaton said. The sheer rightness of Darby’s work was overwhelming him now. He and the old man had both been on the same path, but once again it was Darby whose vision had more clarity.

  “Tom’s heart must be made of the same stuff.” He’d taken his disaster and used it create a living heart for his mechanical man. “If only I’d gotten my hands on the Automaton man. Damn that girl.”

  “That machine is the devil’s work.”

  “It is that, Murphy.” The only option now was to take the gifts he had been given and move forward. “Darby wanted to fuse the Automaton’s heart with this armor and make an entire man from fortified steel. Then he’d take control of the building.”