Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 50

by John Joseph Adams

  That wouldn’t have been the worst reason she’d offered for an expedition. “Not entirely. I also found some newspaper stories of accidents and strange goings-on, all involving this one stretch of rail out of this one town.” She presented a newsprint clipping tucked into the pages of the book.

  Marlowe read aloud. “‘Three experienced engineers vanished into thin air after attempting to travel with the engine. Since then, no others have dared attempt the journey. The phantom train departs on schedule and returns on schedule . . . without any human guidance. The metal of the steel monster glows green in the dark.’ Ah, I see.”

  She said, “I think someone made some improvised modification to an Aetherian engine and created something entirely new. Or perhaps someone has discovered some new artifact, some remains from an undiscovered Aetherian landing.”

  “Or it could all be a sensationalist tale from a dime novel.”

  “It could, but it’s worth a look. And the stationmaster in Alamosa is offering a bounty for anyone who can disable the engine and stop the train. Four men have already vanished in the attempt—presumed dead, devoured by the monster engine. This is in addition to the three missing engineers.”

  “Good God, how can I turn down a challenge like that?”

  She grinned. “I thought you’d say that.”

  • • • •

  They reached Alamosa in a few hours of moderate flying the next day—the winds in the mountains were unpredictable, and Marlowe stayed alert at the helm. By then, Harry had to admit that any romantic notions she’d harbored about the American West were terribly outdated. Like Colorado Springs, Alamosa was a respectable town, with wide main streets and brick and stone buildings, modern construction and plentiful telegraph poles. No stagecoaches in sight, no stampedes, no shootouts between marshals and bandits. Indians, identifiable from their shining black hair and brown skin, wore the same clothes as other citizens of the town: dungarees and button-up shirts. A Chinese-operated laundry had a glowing, Aetherian-powered water heater and steamer in its back alley. Marlowe might want to have a look at the improvisations that had been made to it. This was just a town, like any other. The haunted locomotive was probably also all legend.

  For all its modernity, the town did not have an aerial mooring. “It’s the mountains, I imagine,” Marlowe explained. “The winds are so intractable, trains are simply a more reliable form of transportation.” He was clearly cross from fighting to keep the Kestrel level.

  “Except when they’re taken over by Aetherian ghosts,” Harry said.

  “Well, yes. What they really need out here are some German pilots to train them—all that practice flying over the Alps. Not that I’m going to suggest it.”

  Marlowe found an open lot outside of town where he could lower the Kestrel by partially deflating its bladder. They would not set down, but they could use a rope ladder to descend and anchor the ship via stakes in the ground. Marlowe climbed down with a bundle of long metal stakes and a hammer, while Harry threw him lines to tether the gondola.

  A crowd had gathered to watch. People kept a respectable distance, shading their eyes to stare up at the balloon and the Aetherian motor, which, even powered down, gave off a hum and a glow.

  A man detached himself and stepped forward, hesitant—perhaps because of the large hammer Marlowe was swinging. Time for Harry to intervene.

  She wore a long divided riding skirt, a blouse and vest, good boots and gloves. Her hair was pinned up under a brimmed hat. Not her preferred ensemble for real work, but she’d had a feeling she’d need to look respectable while talking to nervous officials. She wondered if this man wore a brass star under his suit coat, or if that was another outdated romantic notion.

  “Hello, there!” she called to him, climbing down the ladder, satchel over her shoulder. “I do hope it’s acceptable that we moor here for a day or two. We’ll pay a fee—rent for the land, if you like. We’ve got to purchase some supplies, and have some other tasks as well. My name is Miss Mills.”

  She stuck out her hand for shaking, giving him no chance to refuse. The man seemed just as startled by her as by Marlowe and the hammer, either because of her English accent, her forward manner, or both. But he’d brightened at the mention of money, as she’d hoped he would.

  He was an older man with greying hair, but still fit of form. “Conrad Finch, ma’am. I’m the deputy mayor here. I gotta say, we don’t often see airships at all, much less such fine . . . foreign . . . ones as this. With the war on in Europe, I’d have thought a ship like this would be in the fighting.”

  The man had a good eye—American ships tended to have open gondolas, unlike the solid closed gondola of the Kestrel, and Finch had probably never seen anything so modern as her very fine engine. She wondered how much he was really asking: Were they deserters? Had they stolen this ship from the Navy? Were they spies on some mission, or something else entirely? To a knowing eye, the Kestrel was certainly a military-grade vessel, for all that they’d disguised her with clumsy bags of ballast and unpolished brass fittings.

  Harry entirely ignored the implied questions. “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Finch. May I introduce James Marlowe, the pilot of the Kestrel?”

  Marlowe let the hammer hang at his side as he finally came over to meet the locals. Watching the crowd, Harry saw him through their eyes: he looked exactly like an airship pilot should, with a leather jacket and scarf, tall boots, goggles pulled down around his neck, and a windburned glow to his stubbled face. As romantic as any heroic archetype the American West had produced. She sighed a little.

  “I suppose you’re wondering why we’ve come out all this way,” Marlowe said.

  “Well, I suppose so. Like I said, we don’t get airships out here too often. What with the mountains and all.” He gestured over his shoulder. From here, the mountains seemed a long way off. Alamosa was in a valley—the mountains were a barrier surrounding them.

  “We’d like to have a look at that phantom locomotive of yours,” Marlowe said, smiling a perfectly agreeable, innocent smile.

  Finch’s expression fell. If Harry had to name the distant look that had entered his gaze, she would have called it haunted. He spoke in the tone of someone announcing a death.

  “You’ll want to talk to Cooper.”

  • • • •

  They determined ownership of the lot, negotiated and paid a reasonable fee, and even found a pair of trustworthy men to hire as guards. In fact, a handful of them argued for the honor, and Harry got a very good rate for their time.

  Then it was off to see this train.

  The train yard was bustling, with several different lines running through town and branching off. A chalkboard timetable hung in a waiting area, which was clean and inoffensive, if not terribly comfortable.

  Outside, only two of the five locomotives parked or traversing the yard had been adapted to run on Aetherian engines, and the modifications were entirely standard, nothing usual or noteworthy about them. Nothing growling or monstrous, as on the lurid engraving.

  Finch found the stationmaster in an office toward the back, where a large window overlooked the yard. The office door stood open, and the trio of them, trailed by a few onlookers and other officials who’d not stayed behind to gawk at the Kestrel, trooped up to the threshold. The deputy mayor knocked on the doorframe.

  “Cooper? These folks are here to try for the ghost,” he said curtly, a sour look on his face.

  A heavyset and overworked-looking man looked up from the cluttered desk where he sat, and with a sigh he stood and put on his suit jacket, which had been hanging over the back of his chair. His gaze fell on Harry, and an eyebrow raised in curiosity. Finch made introductions. The stationmaster was simply Mr. Cooper, and as expected, he directed his statements at Marlowe. His expression was grim, his frown pulling down his sideburns. “Son, a dozen men before you have come here thinking they can tame that monster, and every one of ’em is dead. What makes you any differe
nt?”

  “I’m British,” Marlowe said, a wicked twinkle in his eye, giving Harry a sideways glance. “And I have the able assistance of Miss Mills.”

  Cooper looked them up and down, and seemed on the verge of countering the challenge. He only shook his head. “Ma’am, with all due respect, you do not want to get involved with this thing.”

  “Oh, I think I do,” she said calmly, not inviting argument.

  Marlowe said, “I was hoping you could give us some more information beyond what’s in the newspapers and penny dreadfuls.”

  Both Cooper and Finch shook their heads at that. “Damn that reporter—pardon me, ma’am—who came through. That book is going to be the only thing anyone remembers about Alamosa.”

  “When did the trouble start?”

  Cooper sat heavily, and the others took up comfortable positions leaning on walls, arms crossed or hands in trouser pockets.

  “Six months ago. Before that everything was fine, just fine. This train—it makes a run over the pass to Gunnison and back. It’s a local line, once a day, shouldn’t be trouble. But one day the regular engine broke down, and we had one of the bug-rigged ones hanging around—”

  “Bug-rigged?” Harry asked.

  “Aetherian-adapted, I think,” Marlowe said.

  She had never heard the term before. It was amusing, appalling, and appropriate, all at once. God bless the Americans and their ornamental figures of speech. “Go on,” she said.

  “We hitched it on up to the regular train, mostly freight and a couple of Pullman cars. Five hours later, I get a telegram from the Gunnison station wanting to know where the train is. Couple hours after that is when the train rolls back here. A dozen passengers stormed off, the driver was white as a ghost, but no one could say what happened. The thing got up into the mountains, into one of the tunnels, everything went dark, there was a bunch of noise, and when it came back out of the tunnel, it was . . . different. It’s got, well, some kind of stuff on it.” That haunted look again.

  “I sent the train back on schedule the next day with another driver and a couple of guards. The train came back on schedule that afternoon. They didn’t. No sign of trouble, it’s like they just hopped off the train and sent it rolling back here. We haven’t gotten anything through that line in six months. We’re having to reroute through Durango.”

  “And the company’s done nothing to investigate?” Marlowe asked.

  “Sure they have. Sent people up on horseback, checked the tracks, checked the tunnel. Watched the train—it stops in the tunnel and turns right back around, all by itself. Whenever we put a driver on it—the driver don’t leave the tunnel. Can’t get anyone to try again. So now we’ve got the bounty. You figure out what’s happening up there, the railroad’ll pay ten thousand dollars. But I’m not putting any bets on you.”

  Finch said, “Man with an airship like yours don’t need ten grand, I expect.”

  “It’s true. We’re not here for the reward,” Marlowe said. “We’re here for the adventure.”

  “Then you’re even crazier than I thought,” Finch huffed. “Both of you.”

  Cooper pointed at Harry. “You’re not getting the lady involved, are you? You’re not taking her up the mountain?”

  “Why wouldn’t I go?” Harry said.

  The stationmaster flustered. “Well. It’s just. I—it’s dangerous, ma’am. We’ve got a fine hotel here in town if you want to wait for your . . .” The word husband was on the tip of his tongue, until he evidently remembered their different last names. He didn’t know what she was.

  “I make my own choices, Mr. Cooper,” she said.

  “Train pulls in every day at noon. You want to take a shot, I won’t stop you. It’s never late. Wish all my trains kept their schedules like that.”

  “We won’t be held responsible for anything that happens to you,” Finch said. “’Round here, we’re used to folks heading into the mountains to prospect or whatnot, and never coming back. You won’t get special notice.”

  Harry hid a smile, because they didn’t know she was a princess of England, and if she vanished, someone would certainly give her special notice. “We understand. Thank you.”

  • • • •

  Marlowe had that enviable Naval ability to claim sleep in the space of minutes, in any position, in any environment. He stretched out on the padded bench in the Kestrel’s main cabin, and that was that. Harry tried to do the same in the pilot’s chair, and failed. Their plan was in place—as much of a plan as they could make until they got their first look at the locomotive. Then they would board a machine that had evidently killed a number of men and made their bodies vanish.

  She tried to imagine what they might see in that moment, but failed to conjure a picture.

  “Harry,” the lieutenant mumbled. “Try to sleep.”

  “Yes, I know,” she sighed.

  “There’s nothing we can do until morning. You need to rest.”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a flask in the pouch behind the pilot’s chair.”

  “I know where the flask is, Marlowe.” A swallow of whiskey would, in theory, put her a step or three closer to sleep.

  “Well then. You know your mind.” A moment later, he was snoring softly.

  Digging in the pouch hanging over the back of the chair, she found the metal flask and took the swallow. The drink warmed her, but it was still another hour before she got any sleep at all.

  • • • •

  Harry wore trousers the next day, propriety be damned. Today, she had to be ready to move. Her boots were scuffed, her gloves worn, her jacket weather-stained. Anyone could see this was not her first time out in the world.

  On the ground under the Kestrel, she secured her pistol in its holster at her hip. It was an Aetherian pistol, the kind Britain didn’t export. It would be as rare a sight here as the Kestrel, but with luck no one would notice she had it. After she pulled her pack and coils of rope over her shoulder, she looked up at the ship and said a silent farewell.

  “We’ll solve this,” Marlowe said, coming up by her shoulder with his own gear, instruments and tools slung in pouches on a bandolier and belt. “We’ll be back at noon tomorrow.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I know.”

  On the way out, Marlowe talked to their impromptu guards. “Do resist laying claim to her until you’re sure we’ve failed to return on the noon train tomorrow, yes?”

  The two men stammered and scuffed their toes, but they agreed to keep watch at least until then.

  Cooper was waiting for them on the platform outside the station, pocket watch in hand. So was Finch, along with a crowd of townsfolk come to see them off. Gawkers. Harry might have wished for less publicity. They had five minutes until the phantom locomotive arrived.

  “I feel like we’re heading out to harpoon a whale,” she murmured.

  “Surely this won’t be anything so dramatic. We take a look at the thing, board it if necessary, see where it takes us while examining and disabling the machinery. The men who’ve tried this before had little experience with Aetherian machinery. It’s been waiting for us to come and speak to it in its own language.”

  “I do hope that was a metaphor.”

  “Here it comes,” Cooper said, looking out along the tracks to the north. “Right on time.”

  No shrill, distant whistle announced the engine’s approach. Only the clank of wheels against rail and the low, throbbing hum of an Aetherian drive emitting a great deal of power. The townsfolk who were present backed up, pressed themselves to the wall of the station as the beast slowed and came to a stop at the platform. It moved in reverse on this leg of the journey, pushing its coal car ahead of it. As Cooper had explained, the rest of the cars had been uncoupled, so only the engine and former coal car remained, a monstrous beast plying the tracks with a will of its own.

  It didn’t look like a steam locomotive fitted with an Aetherian drive, or even
one designed with Aetherian technology from the first. This was something else entirely, and wholly unlike any machine Harry had seen. In an adapted locomotive, the Aetherian generator was typically built into the furnace, with tubes and pistons connecting the generator to the side rods along the engine’s wheels. But while this engine might once have been a retrofitted steam locomotive, it had changed: Where the tubes and pistons connected the side rods along the wheels to the Aetherian generator, typically built into the firebox in such an arrangement, additional cabling looping around the broiler and into the cabin, growing almost organically in the manner of vines, obscuring the windows, stretching over the roof and reaching back. Wires tangled around each other over the coupler, swarming to the empty coal car, where the tips of the tendrils lay reaching out along the metal, waiting to extend further. All of it glowed a pale green, the familiar sickly, pulsing light that seemed to accompany all things Aetherian.

  “Bug-rigged, indeed,” Harry said.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Marlowe breathed.

  That gave Harry pause. She’d never heard Marlowe hesitate over anything, particularly where research was concerned. She had seen many of the same extreme Aetherian experiments he had. But this—was something else. “Marlowe, if you aren’t sure—”

  “No. Let’s go. We’ll alight on the coal car.” The back half of the car remained free of Aetherian growths; the steel box seemed safe enough. Marlowe was still looking at the engine—something had caught his attention.

  Stationmaster Cooper said, “You folks only have a minute to get on. If you’re sure you want to do this.”

  “Thank you,” Harry said. “We’ll see you tomorrow then, yes?” Cooper just shook his head.

  Harry and Marlowe kept hold of their ropes and wrenches, wire cutters and all the rest, and hopped on to the ledge at the end of the coal car just as the engine hummed to a higher pitch, reversed direction, and clacked back along the tracks, away from the station and toward the mountains.

  • • • •

  She had the feeling they had grabbed the tiger by the tail.