“Bear?” I asked, as I walked round the fire pit. Ravens hopped away at our approach but didn’t scatter, just gathered in a band to wait for us to clear off so they could go back to pecking through busted tins.
“No,” Ruth answered, after a good look round. “No bear tracks. No bear shit. Bears have smelly shit. And look there – no bear would be able to open those boxes so neat.”
The latches on chests were flipped open, locks broken clean off. I checked those: one filled with thick blankets, the other empty. The rough shed we’d checked before hadn’t much in it worth investigating. Some dried meat, tough enough you could use it to drive in nails. “People did this?”
“If they did, they’d have come from across the creek.” She shielded her eyes – late evening but the sun was still hanging above the horizon, bright and burning. “There’s boot marks.” Ruth pointed to the ground. “But there is no sense to them doing this.”
She wasn’t talking about them coming from the creek’s right-hand side, she meant raiding the camp. People rarely killed each other up here – usually fever or the winter got them, or they starved, or they got in some accident while digging. Wasn’t much in the ways of hospitals out in the wilderness. Sure people got in arguments, sabotaged each other’s equipment or made nuisances of themselves, but the Mounties were sure to intervene before things got ugly.
This, though, wasn’t usual. I reached into my pack from where I’d dropped it and pulled out my pistol, popped open the magazine. It took spirals of bullets that looked like Nautilus shells. Ruth raised her eyebrows seeing that. I shoved the loaded gun through the loop in my belt. Next, I drew out a contraption like a pocket watch, flipping it open and adjusting the dials round the edges till the needle starting shifting.
Ruth didn’t ask what it was and I wouldn’t have answered. No way to explain how it picked up decaying energies anyhow. Even I wasn’t quite straight on how it worked.
We went further up the hillside to where Jack had burrowed down, sinking shafts into the earth by lighting fires to soften the permafrost, one layer at a time. Same people had searched through here too, looked like.
“Don’t make no sense,” Ruth said. “They didn’t take a thing worth taking, and you’d have to be a special fool to come looking for gold around this place.”
I nodded. Not even a trace of gold here. I looked down at what Victor called his “thaumaturgograph” (a damn mouthful that, we girls called it a “thaum”). The needle stayed steady at first, then shifted as I traced whatever veins Jack was following.
If there were other people after what I was after, you’d think I would’ve heard something about it in Dawson, some passing comment, but it looked like the locals thought no one was much interested in Jack. Jack London, now, at least he came down with a bad case of scurvy.
“You heard anything about him?” I asked Ruth, still keeping fixed on that needle creeping up and down with every step.
“He grew strange in the head, that’s all I know. But that just happens to white men up here.”
God knew Ruth was right. Men would go into the Klondike and go mad. I’d heard tales in saloons of men who stripped off and went into the forest to howl with the wolves, their broken corpses found later, stiff on the moss.
Only Lady Amery wouldn’t have sent me here if Jack was just another man swallowed by the forest. And there were hints and mutterings about Jack, that for all his secrecy, he’d spilled when he got drunk about things he shouldn’t have known – of shining metal monsters and creatures sailing from the stars and machines that could think.
Seemed he started off sinking one shaft, another, but then moved on to hollowing out trenches too, more like he was trying to dig up bones than find any gold in the bedrock. I was passing the freshest dig when the reading on the dial piqued up a few marks. I stooped down, saw the needle tremble some more, then hopped into the trench. My fingers felt at the ice-laced dirt. A trace here, but gone as soon as I moved the thaum away. Levels low but noticeable. Then I went down a bit further and saw he’d hollowed out a section, like he’d scraped something out. Something else shone there, glowing on its own accord. I pinched it up; didn’t need to take it to the light because a bit of flame danced trapped inside. Some sliver of crystal or glass thinner than a thumbnail, surface patterned like a cross-stitch. The thaum’s needle jumped when I held it closer. Not just residue, then, a bit more left behind. But it was just a fragment of whatever Jack found.
“How are you with tracking down a man, if he’s still living? Or men, if he ain’t?” I called to Ruth.
“That’s what you brought me for.” A pause, after. Then she said, “Might be you won’t need those services anymore.”
The way she said it… I scrambled up the slick frozen soil so I could see where she was staring.
The figure was a distance away, crouched on a rock. I straightened, let the thaum drop and let a hand stray to my gun. He wasn’t pointing a rifle, though, just sitting silent. Even from there, even in his rough flannel and trousers caked with dirt and coming apart with rot, I could recognize him as the Toronto gentleman from the photograph Sabina gave me. Barely. Back then he was clean-cut, dapper even, suited up in black, and clean-shaven so you could see the smooth lines of his chin. Now he was gaunt, had a long and lanky beard to match his long and lanky form.
And he wasn’t alone.
* * *
Working for Lady Amery, I was used to my share of strange sights, whether it was some priest sitting on a shield while hovering over the sand (Egypt, 1896, anti-gravity device) or a woman peeling free her face to reveal another one beneath (Colorado, 1897, special chemical compound that could mimic human skin). But Ruth wasn’t, and I knew I’d chosen the right guide when she didn’t collapse or run but pulled a big knife from her belt instead.
There were people hidden behind the various boulders along the slope, four folk rising up all at the same time and two of them were pointing rifles. People, I say, but their limbs and faces shone with wires wound tight around, points jabbed in like Christ’s crown leaving dried blood streaking down their skin. The way their limbs jerked and swung and stuttered, it was clear it was those shining tendrils moving the flesh and bone and not any muscle beneath. Revenants, I thought at first, and I knew there was a bacteria that did that from one of Greta’s missions last year. But no, these bodies weren’t reanimated, they were more like puppets thrall to the whims of those fine prehensile cords they wore.
“You should have stopped,” Jack shouted. “Stopped looking for me, stopped looking for us. You see what’s happened to the last ones who tried their hand at searching.” He indicated the four. “They tried thieving from me.” He paused, I couldn’t tell why. “Wanted to separate us. They came close, but they shouldn’t have.”
I clicked the tiny lever on my pistol over to the far right but didn’t draw, not right then. Instead, I raised my hands over my head. “You mistake me,” I called out. “I’m no thief. I came for you. I came to help you.”
Neither he nor the four moved at all. “I can’t be helped. You see what’s waiting, why I didn’t want any following. Who told you to come here?”
I racked my brains for a proper lie then, maybe about his sister sending me to come bring him home, but he’d been watching us that whole time. Something nearer the truth would have to do. “You’re not right in the head, Jack. Whatever you found, it’s changed you like it changed those dead men. You don’t want to visit that on the world, do you?”
He said nothing.
I tried again. “You gotta turn away, Jack. Whatever you found is too big for just you. It’ll eat you, maybe already has.”
Jack took his time before answering. “Are you a nun, come to save my soul? Because I have already found God, and she is cold. She is pitiless. She was content just with me but you won’t leave her in peace. You came and now we can’t let you tell a soul. Why did you have to do that?”
He gave no signal, no fanfare, but I knew to spring asid
e just then.
The two with the rifles opened fire one after the other. I knocked Ruth down so a bullet only took her hat, made it soar. The dirt plumed up where I’d been standing and we both rolled down into the trench as Jack’s dead men drew back bolts to feed in the next rounds. Me, I braced one hand on the lip of the trench and vaulted up, drawing my pistol while I did and letting the bullets unspool in a short burst. I was too far away to make much damage but the noise and patter made enough distraction to buy me a little time. I charged up that hill for the next bit of cover I could find, a toppled wheelbarrow, and the bullet meant for me went denting iron instead. They were clumsy with their aim, the frame-and-meat setup not suited for fine motor work. Fortunate, that.
Next time I ducked out, I took a half second to aim. A long shot, but I got it, blew through the one man’s hand so the gun went fumbling out of his fingers, mangled flesh no good for the wire to manipulate after. I’d need a long sprint to get back to my pack, cursed myself for leaving it so far off.
The other two were running down with woodsman’s hatchets free from the belts, following the one I’d just disarmed, while Jack was back behind the stone. From the angle, I could tell he was holding his hands over his eyes like he was weeping before he slid out of sight. Well, fuck him. I judged the distance, popped up to hit the remaining gunman, but got him in the arm instead. Meant I’d wasted the shot since I didn’t bust open some bone. Opening holes in rotting meat wouldn’t even slow them down.
“Make for the creek!” I told Ruth. I squared my shoulders and flicked out my knife with my left hand. The gunman aimed for her but this time my three bullets struck home, made his leg unstitch and sent him stumbling.
Already two were splitting off to run for my guide while she splashed through the water. Me, I still needed to conserve bullets and one of those bastards was too close for comfort.
Thing is, hatchets like that are meant for cutting wood, not people. The heads aren’t balanced for speed. You can see a swing coming from a mile off and I ducked as the axe went whistling over. I didn’t want to get caught by the twitching wires moving the dead man about so I put a shot square in his chest. It sparked against metal criss-crossed like laces on a corset, but at a close range like that the force alone made the dead man stagger. I danced in, my knife plunging into his side and tearing through till the flat was resting against one of those cords. I hit the catch on the handle and yanked free the ripcord stashed inside. Didn’t back off fast enough before the dead man gave me a good whack in the face with the axe’s handle. Not hard enough to draw blood, but it still sent me sprawling.
Too late for him, though. He had the hatchet raised up for a strike but the dynamo in the knife was already engaged and on a two-second count sent a burst that crackled all through the metal holding him up. It didn’t look nothing like when you used that knife on a person. No freezing and shaking as the shock fed electricity through the water running through you, no; instead those wires glowed red, blue, white, then stripped off in a bundle of coils. No burst of blood when the wires came free either. Just a slow ooze and the corpse dropping face-first. I rolled out of the way and ripped my knife out of him.
The other one coming up behind didn’t seem so keen after seeing that, not after I shot him with my remaining rounds. I won’t say he hollered for his buddies, because he didn’t say a thing, but they were turning their attention. Another bullet from the hunting rifle sang by, though the one shooting it was balanced on one leg. I was all out of my own. Worst thing, the wires I’d freed were moving again.
The shock gave me enough time to get on my feet and make a run for it, just hoping that his aim wasn’t steady enough. I was a few paces off from my pack before the other one reached me. He was acting different, the wires slithering out towards the ground like snakes. I tucked my gun back in my belt, barrel hot against my trousers, and dropped down to take up a rusty shovel. Just the end, I lifted it up one-handed and spun it for enough momentum to give that body a good solid whack without needing to drop my knife. He flew back. Space enough in there for me to flip open the side pocket of my pack where I’d stuffed the string of three ferocient canisters.
I let my knife drop, drew out one of those bundles of glass and brass and twisted the top to prime it. Closed my eyes, held my breath, and dashed it on the ground between me and the puppet corpse. A scream ripped through the air, so high it almost popped my eardrums, and through my eyelids I could see the flash of green. One big pulse of ferocient energy – it’d only work if I’d guessed right from the way the dynamo knife affected them, overload any electrical current, pack enough magnetic resonance to stop the smallest spark, fry them clear in a wave of heavy static.
The blast was wide-ranging too, which is why you had to be careful with them. Expensive as all hell. Lady Amery reserved them for the real nasty threats, when whatever technology your enemy had was far beyond the ken of humankind.
So after the few seconds where my vision cleared from white milky light, I saw the remaining three corpses were falling, the wires spread out around them like tree-roots from a precariously perched spruce. My knife’s blade was twisted up into something useless because it still held a bit of charge. Couldn’t hear nothing over the ringing in my ears and the air felt thick and smelled like ozone. I looked up the slope and saw that Jack was already gone.
“Shit,” I said to no one in particular. Was then that I could hear Ruth’s voice shouting, though I didn’t know what. I sat down on the cold ground and fetched another spiral of bullets to feed into my gun.
She came over to me limping, though I couldn’t see a wound on her. I said, “We need to chase him. Need you to track him.”
Ruth’s eyes couldn’t hold more disbelief than she showed right then. She said, “I’m leaving.”
“I’ll double your pay.”
“Nothing’s gonna make me go up against…that.”
“Triple.” I said. No answer to that, so I said, “Five times. My benefactor can afford it.”
She scratched her head, at the close-tied braids, and gave a worried look at the dead wires. “Okay.”
I hefted my pack and we started after Jack.
* * *
I didn’t need her for the tracking, not really. I was trained in that just as well as I was trained in anything else. Yet Ruth knew the land better than I did, not just where to step but how, the dips and fissures and too-faint game trails, the shortcuts that would save you time instead of landing you in brambles.
Pursuit went on well into the night and over to the morning; we only took an hour’s sleep in between. Sunset came and went but a band of light kept shining bright enough to read by. Wind picked up under a starless sky, sending the spruce needles brushing together, whispering.
Jack wasn’t careful about his flight. Truth is, we could have caught him a lot earlier, but I wanted a clear sense of where he was fleeing. Ruth ended up making a good guess. We clambered up onto a ridge above the trees, just hard rock and long grass beneath our boots, and followed to an outcrop of mottled grey stone. Spotted him for the third time since we started, just on the rough trail below us, and I fired a shot so he’d know we were there. Just like before, he tried running but the distance was too short for it to do him any good. I pattered some bullets on the ground in front of him and he stopped short. “There’s nowhere left to run to, Jack,” I shouted, while Ruth skidded down, holding a coil of rope.
Jack Sheldon stopped his wild glances and raised his hands, slow-like. He let Ruth shove him down to his knees; she trussed his hands together behind his back and divested him of his knife. I came skipping after.
“You can’t follow,” he croaked.
“I can go wherever I like, thank you kindly.” I tapped the remaining two canisters looped to my belt where they should’ve been all along. “Now, we’re gonna talk and you’re gonna lead us good and proper to wherever you stashed this…thing of yours.”
“I won’t—”
I balled my hand up
in a fist and gave him a hard smack. He cried out; spat a tooth and some blood after.
“If Ruth’s got the right of it, you’re headed for a cave a bit up north, not even an hour’s walk more. She right?”
From the way he hung his head, I knew she was.
“You dragged it up this far. Why bother?”
First, Jack just swallowed and it was then I noticed how pale he’d gotten. Finally he whispered, “I didn’t want others to hear her.”
“Hear? No, stay there on your knees and speak up.”
His body trembled just a bit. “Madam, I first came up this way to die. I couldn’t face my family if I left the Yukon with even less than I came, so I staked everything on one last claim. If I failed, then I’d find someplace peaceful and hang myself. Only when I started digging, I heard something under that soil. Or not heard, there wasn’t so much of a voice, but she was trying to speak, gave me waking dreams like I’d never had, pulled me like a current. I followed her, found bits and pieces of some red metal like I’d never seen, and then I found her in the dirt and hauled her up. After touching her, we – we bonded together. She got right in my brain. I was going to protect her. I was going to let her rest and feed until she was ready for the world. I hauled her where I thought no one else would come, where no one else would interfere.”
“You fed her those men I fought back there?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “No, ma’am. We couldn’t let them leave and spread the word. It was too early for that. What she wants is iron, copper, gold. She transmutes it. Builds…such pretty things. Such pretty, pretty things.”
I could imagine those “pretty things.”
“She’ll leave me. The dreams aren’t the same. They’re angry. She’ll do something to the world, something terrible, only, she wants to speak and tries so hard but I can’t quite understand her. Maybe if I know what she truly means…” His voice choked at the end, like he was ready to weep.
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