Valves & Vixens

by Nicole Gestalt

  The newcomer’s grin expanded into a huge smile that quickly dominated her round face as she beheld Cassandra’s expression. “I beg apology for startling you so,” she said. “I am Ensign Shirakawa, Second Assistant Navigation Officer of the Aquarius.”

  “I - I had heard that a very few women had lately joined various Cloud Ship crews and even that several were Officers - ”

  “This is correct,” Shirakawa said patiently. “The latest of the ever-ongoing Reforms.”

  “Yuki signed on a month ago, when we were out west - California,” Yoruba explained.

  “Oh, that’s wonderful. I didn’t dare hope to meet such a pioneering person tonight! And I had no idea you even had Chinese crew aboard this vessel!”

  Another wide tolerant smile adorning her face, Shirakawa said, “In point of fact, I am Japanese.”

  “Oh. Forgive my inexcusable ignorance - uh, Ensign is it?”

  “Correct. And no apology is needed. Are you considering joining the crew? We female Sky Toilers are as yet so few in number, another here would be so welcome - at least from my perspective!”

  “I - fear I haven’t the qualifications.” Cassandra averted her eyes in shame.

  “There are training programs,” Shirakawa observed - her almond eyes mischievously bright and inviting in a way that Cassandra found almost eerily familiar.

  “I - will certainly consider it.”

  “Very good.” Shirakawa turned her impish smile Yoruba Tarr’s way. “Do all you are able to convince her, yes?”

  “I absolutely shall,” the younger Engineer promised.

  Fowler now pretended to take offence. “Think I have no persuasive skills?” he asked with the beginnings of an exaggerated pout.

  “You are - a thousand pardons, Good Chief Engineer - but I fear that you are, in point of fact, rather - well, advanced in age for the sort of persuasion I sense will work best for this fine young individual!”

  “Hmph!” London Fowler snorted, hands on hips in protest.

  “Oh!” Cassandra exclaimed and only then thought to share her name with the intriguing Asian woman.

  “Very good,” Ensign Shirakawa said with a parting bow. “Now I must return to my duties as this night’s Officer of the Deck - even though we sit here motionless and trampling a much extended expanse of Pennsylvania grassland, I must keep watch. Till we meet again, yes?”

  “Yes.” Cassandra smiled in reply.

  Five minutes later, she was in the Chief Engineer’s cabin - naked and bent forward at the waist across rumpled sheets with Fowler crouching immediately behind her and doing his level best to prove Ensign Shirakawa quite wrong.

  Cassandra was forced to agree that actually, he gave a fine account of himself,.

  But then it was Yoruba Tarr’s turn and the several quite agreeable grunts and gasps the first man had coaxed from Cassandra were put rapidly to shame by the paroxysms of joyous love and lust the darkest of dark men gave rise to in their couplings.

  “Not your fault,” she breathlessly consoled Fowler. “You were and are in no sense lacking - and certainly not too old! There is just something extraordinary- about this one that moves me and - hey, where are you from anyway, Yoruba?”

  “I am a true African,” the younger Engineer murmured, wrapping his arms about her for a second go-round. “It is amusing, really - in my father’s youth, when the first Sky Ships passed over my homeland, my people - the Ibo - mistook them and the strange men who piloted them for divinely-inspired, if not outright Gods in themselves! And now, among the peoples who created the devices in the first place and should by rights know better, idiots like that Brace fellow build up in their minds a cult-like reverence for us!”

  “I know,” Cassandra said between hot kisses. “We so depend on what you do - and do so without bothering to even partly understand the techniques you employ - that we’re almost bound to turn your efforts into a sort of semi-religious mythology!”

  “But you aren’t like that - you wish to truly know and understand?”

  “Yes, definitely!” she gasped. “And - I dare to admit that I sense that I should very much like to gain this knowledge by your side above all others!” Cassandra blinked, surprised by her own surging and powerful, profound and undeniable emotions.

  She shook her head, turned her eyes London Fowler’s way. “I mean no offence to you or any other, Chief Engineer! But what I just said - I mean it, truly! I feel as if - quite suddenly and unexpectedly, even shockingly - I have found what I dare to imagine my soul mate! And this is so, even if this magnificent ‘true African’ doesn’t feel the same!”

  “But what if he does?” Fowler asked with a smile.

  Cassandra frowned in puzzlement, until the Senior Engineer gestured.

  She turned her head, met Yoruba’s steady gaze. The very dark and masculine, yet at once gentle and powerfully sexual young Cloud Ship Engineer nodded but once.

  Then he trustingly placed his himself in her care.

  She reached out , positioning him correctly with her hand.

  They stared into one another’s eyes and surged together - Cassandra Webb pinned upright against the cabin bulkhead of the Greatest of all the Great Cloud Ships.

  Yoruba Tarr lurched forward, till they were joined as deeply and absolutely as two coupling humans were capable of joining.

  And the rest was history.

  The Waiting Future

  By Crysta K. Coburn

  I took the late morning train north out of Tokyo. My heart swelled as we passed filthy workmen piling timber for new homes and laying track for more trains. Progress! I thought.

  As we left the expanding borders of the new capital, I saw peasants in their stained and damp short-pants raise their heads, the iron dragon on which I road racing through rice paddies like the black finger of modernity poking into their simple lives. Bare-breasted women paused as they hung their laundry and watched, darkly tanned hands shielding their eyes from the bright sun to better see the beast that belched clouds of steam into the air.

  I barely glanced at my newspaper and its reports of a new airship line from Fukuoka to the Korean Peninsula and the late arrival of much anticipated ore from the China mainland. I was wholly absorbed by the passing of civilisation as our train continued through more paddies, skirted villages of little more than mud huts, and wound through thick forests of twisted camphor trees and bamboo. Each vista was a wonder to me, so recently arrived from London, England, where scarcely a spot of green could be found compared to what now passed outside my window. I mused on how quickly we forget our roots. My destination was the seaside fishing village where I had spent my boyhood.

  Nakamura, my brother-in-law, met me at the station, and we greeted each other with a hearty handshake, as was the modern custom. He was dressed in traditional Japanese trousers and jacket with a black bowler hat perched on his head. I noted the chain of a pocket watch dangling from the sash around his waist. On his feet, he wore traditional socks and clogs. I complimented him on his well-blended attire, particularly the hat and watch. He, in turn, wondered at my own hat, a boater with a light band.

  “The latest fashion,” I assured him. As was my brown suit, which I’d purchased before leaving London, though I thought it rude to point it out to him.

  Nakamura had arranged for a local farmer’s boy to take us by cart to his home some distance away. I had two trunks, one large and one of medium size, that I helped the boy quickly load into the cart before we set off. My sister waited no doubt with impatience. We had not seen one another for the many years I was away serving in the military then pursuing my education in England, but we had written often. (She dictated to her husband who was a fairly learned man, if isolated by his surroundings, and could both read and write rather fluently.) Riding, we would reach her before night fell.

  The Na
kamura residence was located some distance from the train station amidst a small cluster of new dwellings. The land had been vacant when I’d left, as had the area surrounding including the station. My feet had been my conveyance then, and I’d walked all the way to the port city in the south where I’d then boarded a steam ship, a monster to my eyes at the time. Thankfully I had not been alone then either.. The son of my father’s sister, Hamasaki Atsushi, had shared in that adventure. We were both the same age and joining the military as we’d been instructed to do by the new law. It had been his father’s dying wish that we should both be men of the world, thus we continued on to England together when our three years were served.

  As we rode, Nakamura asked about my trip.. Was it a comfortable passage? Tolerably. Did Hamasaki accompany me? Yes, but I left him in Tokyo to attend to business. What sort of business? I didn’t know, but I hoped it amounted to something. I was promised an in if it did.

  “How are you and my sister?” I asked. “Does the Nakamura family yet have an heir?”

  He laughed heartily at my needling.

  “Not yet, not yet,” he answered. “But not from lack of trying, I assure you.”

  I laughed as well. I then inquired after his business. I knew my brother-in-law had made a tidy sum opening a post office in our little village of fishermen and farmers. It was quickly followed by a telegraph station in the same spot as the post office, and he was instrumental in luring the rail road. How he accomplished that, I couldn’t imagine, but I was glad he had, and I expressed my admiration. Again, he laughed.

  “The gods must be smiling on me,” he said. “But I won’t boast. I don’t want them to take my good fortune away! What I do, I do for the good of our community. Our fields and our nets are plentiful, and your late uncle’s inn has at least doubled in size since you’ve seen it last.”

  “I can’t believe it!”

  “It’s true! Ask this boy if you don’t believe me.” I declined, and he continued. “We aren’t so far from the capital that people won’t come for a rest now and again. And you know there is the port just there.” He pointed to the south where the silhouettes of ships could be seen, though not the city itself.

  “You mean to make this a resort town?”

  “I mean to make it into something, anyway.”

  I nodded my approval.

  “Tomorrow I will introduce you to Mr. Itoh. He’s been a firm ally in my endeavours.”

  “Mr. Itoh?” I echoed as we stepped down from the cart, having arrived at our destination. “I think I remember that name. He’s a farmer, isn’t he?”

  Nakamura nodded. “Our most successful.”

  “Is he political?”

  “Not particularly. But he is shrewd. I like him!”

  “I look forward to our meeting.”

  The farmer’s boy stayed to help us carry my things into the house. Nakamura sent me into the parlour to my sister as he took care of the trunks and paying the boy.

  My sister’s dress was traditional, but her hair was piled on her head in a modern style. She greeted me warmly and we sat together on a low settee - I was quite surprised to see one there! - so that she could get a good look at me. Nakamura soon joined us, sitting on a matching armchair so that we could all share the table where my sister had her maid set out hot tea for us.

  “You are so old!” my sister exclaimed.

  “Not old, Sister, surely,” I contested. “Perhaps you mean I’ve become a man.”

  “It’s true,” she relented. “You were still a boy when you left. Why, I think my husband and I were just married the spring before.”

  “Yes, I think that’s true,” Nakamura chimed in. “I think he’s grown taller since then. And fatter!”

  “You think I’ve grown fat? Look at the two of you!”

  We all laughed and I relayed not only the tedious tale of my journey, but also stories of my time in London and the islands where I’d been stationed before that. I expressed how pleased I was to find my home so different, glad for the changes we were making. I admired my sister’s home and her modern looks, happy she and her husband were not fighting the tide. My sister was almost matronly in my eyes, which I told her, adding that it was a shame there were no little ones to be matron to. She looked a little sad at this, and I instantly regretted teasing her as I had Nakamura.

  She was, however, quick to reply with, “Am I mistaken, or are you still unmarried? At least I’ve achieved that.”

  “I’ve been out of the country!” I defended. “Or should I have married in London?”

  My sister and I had always had an easy relationship. Our parents had both died by the time I left home, so she was like a second mother to me, it struck me then how much I’d missed her, and how really wonderful it felt to be home after so long. That night, I slept better under her roof than I had in years.

  The next morning after breakfast, I sat with my sister and brother-in-law in their parlour and gave them the gifts I had brought with me from London. To my sister, I presented a clockwork dancer who, when the key was wound, spun and dipped on her little brass base no taller than my hand was long. A melody none of us could identify played with it. This trinket quite delighted her, and she clapped and laughed as the little dancer went through her motions. My brother-in-law, I think, was also impressed.

  “How does it work?” my sister asked me.

  I had to confess that I didn’t really know. “Some kind of internal mechanism,” was all I could say.

  “It’s so beautiful.” She turned it in her hand, inspecting the dancer’s little copper dress and delicately painted features. “Thank you, Ichi. I will always treasure it.”

  Pleased, I bowed my head to her. “It was nothing, Sister.”

  For Nakamura, I had a similar miniature mechanical wonder, only this one was a little man that went through the motions of lighting a pipe and puffing on it twice before beginning again. My sister was also fascinated by this, but I think a little less delighted as she didn’t much care for pipe smoke, insisting it made her cough. The little clockwork man did not actually produce smoke. Now that would have been a feat!

  In the early afternoon, Nakamura and I set off for Mr. Itoh’s house. The day was pleasant and the temperature mild, making our walk a happy one. I could tell from the size of his home as we approached that Mr. Itoh had done quite well for himself under the new regime. Nakamura informed me that Mrs. Itoh had passed away many years before and that the daughter, Miss Yuki, was only a few years younger than myself. I think he was continuing my sister’s joke from the night before about still being a bachelor. I tried, but I could not recall Miss Yuki. I barely remembered her father, even after we’d been introduced by Nakamura and were sitting on the tatami of his parlour waiting for tea.

  “You have just returned home?” Mr. Itoh asked me.

  “That’s right. Well, I should say that I have spent the last week in Tokyo readjusting myself. London is a very different kind of place!” I smiled and he grunted. Afraid I had offended him somehow, I asked, “Have you travelled much, Mr. Itoh?”

  The old man seemed to consider this question thoroughly before answering. I had thought it a simple question. I was beginning to see why my brother-in-law had called him shrewd.

  “Though I am a farmer, and very much tied to the land, I have travelled some, yes. I even went to Edo - excuse me, Tokyo - when I was a boy.”

  “Really!” I exclaimed. “What took you there? Before the train, it must have been a very long journey.”

  He nodded firmly. “It was. My mother’s brother lived there with his wife’s family. My mother, her other brother, and I went together to visit them. It was in the early days. Everything was just starting to change.”

  “I see, I see,” I answered. “And have you been back since?”

  Mr. Itoh shook his head as if i
t were unthinkable. “When would I find the time? Nakamura and I are too busy bringing Tokyo to us!”

  We all laughed together and drank our tea.

  “You know,” Mr. Itoh said after a moment. “I think I remember you. You were a wild boy!”

  “Me? Was I wild?”

  “Yes!” He nodded emphatically. “I remember Nakamura’s wife running after you all the time.”

  Nakamura laughed. I had to relent that his story might be true. Still, I couldn’t entirely place the man, and I confessed as much.

  “Children don’t pay attention to old men,” he said.

  “You can’t be that old,” I answered. His hair and moustache were mostly grey, leaning toward white, and he did seem tired, but that didn’t mean he was feeble, I thought.

  “When you are young, anyone older than you is old,” was his reply. I didn’t know what to say that, so I said nothing.

  When our tea was finished, Nakamura suggested we take a walk and Mr. Itoh could show us his land. I didn’t think there would be much to see, but as our host agreed to the idea, so did I. It turned out Mr. Itoh’s land was quite extensive. Some had been passed down to him from his father, but much he’d purchased from the previous tenants when the hierarchy had been officially abolished. (“It’s amazing what a man can grow when he is allowed to grow for his own profit,” Nakamura whispered to me.) I was impressed. Though the land taxes were high, Mr. Itoh had branched out into things like textiles and sake, managing to earn an income from multiple enterprises. He also leased much of the land he’d bought back to the original tenants, saving himself the trouble of hiring people to help him work the paddies. The garden surrounding his home was also well-kept and lovely, yet simple, and I surmised he was a man who enjoyed nice things, but knew his limits.

  Not long into our walk, we were joined by a Mr. Ueda who’d been coming up the road to pay a visit to Mr. Itoh. Mr. Ueda was another farmer of some prominence I gathered from the way Nakamura and Mr. Itoh treated him. His bearing also demanded respect. The man stood tall and stiff, like a proud samurai. Though his clothes were neat and traditional, his hair was cropped close to his skull in the more modern fashion. I guessed him to be around ten years my senior. We were introduced and my situation explained.