Despair touched Brendan’s heart. “I was hoping Pat would be in a condition where I could at least speak with him. I need him—or his authority—to call up the automatons of this city.”
“Call them up?” echoed Topaz.
“There’s a mob of militant humans coming.” Brendan jerked his head toward the door. “If the automatons of Buffalo believe in themselves, now’s the time to make a stand.”
A soft murmur went around the room. More than half those gathered were automatons, many of them hybrids.
Brendan said, “Pat’s the closest thing to a leader we have. No one else can speak for him.”
One of the hybrids, Terry Greely—Chastity’s husband—said, “Rose can speak for him—as his wife she’s the only one who can. Talk to her, Sergeant Fagan. See if she’ll lend you Pat’s name and authority.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Rose, Brendan needs to ask you something,” Topaz said softly.
Rose Kelly sat propped on her cot in the room beside the one where her husband had been dismantled, the white bandages on her wrists bright banners testifying to her state of mind. She and Dr. Rasmussen, still in attendance, must have been playing cards—a deck lay spread between them on a small table. The doctor rose, when Brendan and Topaz entered, and slipped from the room.
Rose lifted both hands to her heart. “I thought you’d come to tell me the madman had failed after all, that I wouldn’t be getting Pat back.”
“No,” Brendan answered. “The madman’s still working.”
He sat down in Rasmussen’s vacated chair, and Topaz tiptoed out.
Rose gestured at the cards. “Dr. Rasmussen is very kind. Not only has he refused to leave me alone, he’s attempted to distract me with Rummy. It doesn’t help. Nothing does.”
“Waiting is never easy,” Brendan said lamely.
Disconcertingly, Rose’s brown eyes filled with tears. “And right now I’m waiting to find out if I’ll ever again be with the person I love most in the world.”
Brendan thought of Ginny—out there somewhere in the dark without him. Alive or dead? He didn’t think much of her chances if that mob caught her. The despair nibbling at the edges of his sanity threatened for an instant to overwhelm him. He fought it back. Despair would render him as good as useless. How could he save Ginny then?
Rose blinked away the tears. “But what can I do for you, Sergeant?”
“It’s about the cause. Pat’s cause.”
“Automaton rights, you mean?” Rose tilted up her chin. “Well, you know it’s my cause too. I’ve seen the injustice first hand.”
Brendan jerked his head toward the door. “Rose, it’s all broke wide open out there. There’s an army of vigilante humans on the move, bent on intimidation. They’ll destroy anything in their path, and it’s too big for the police. That mob needs to be faced down.”
“By automatons.” Rose stated the words with certainly. “This is the moment Pat awaited.”
“It looks like it, Rose.”
“And he’s going to miss it.” Two tears leaked from her eyes after all. The pain in her face made Brendan’s heart ache.
“We can do it for him. If you’ll lend me his name, Rose; as his wife, you’re the only one who can.”
Her hands moved spasmodically on the blanket.
Brendan pressed on. “But you must do it now while he’s still a-alive, so to speak.”
“While his existence, and mine, hangs in the balance?”
“Yes.”
“Sergeant Fagan, I was married before. Did you know that? Oh, not in this body. That’s what made it legal for me to marry Pat even though my husband—my first husband—is still alive in Philadelphia. I—at least my spirit—was forced into this body by yet another monster. I wanted no part of it…didn’t wish to live this way…would have killed myself then. But there was Pat, kind and warm and always there—so understanding. He taught me the flesh doesn’t matter. Nor does the steel. It’s all about the sweetness of the soul inside.
“Sergeant Fagan, I may never again be in the company of the sweetest soul I’ve ever known. I may no longer be able to live for Pat—but I can live for his cause. Right is right.” She leaned forward and touched Brendan’s hand. “You have all the authority I can give to use Pat’s name. Call up every automaton in this city if you have to. Make it right—for his sake.”
****
The call passed in whispers that were less whispers than clicks and mechanical whines—Pat Kelly says…Pat Kelly says…he has summoned us. It is time.
Brendan, aching from head to toe, stood in the gray dawn at Niagara Square, the place chosen for the automatons to amass. Before his eyes, the sun came up in a welter of red from the east. He vaguely recalled school lessons from his youth and some poem by one of the old poets—Sir Walter Scott, possibly—that proposed a red sunrise as an ill harbinger for battle.
He’d never imagined himself leading a battle of any kind. A peacekeeper, he would have said, despite his militant Irish ancestors and that deep-seated wild streak he believed he’d successfully disciplined. This could not be battle of the usual kind. Using Pat’s name, he had to impress that on his charges—they could stand strong, they could resist, but they could cause no harm.
His army must be one of peaceful demonstration like that other fellow they’d told him about in school—Thoreau, that was the man. The automatons must gain their liberation by proving they weren’t the danger they’d been painted, by not fighting for it.
If he failed in this, the city would explode. He’d fail Pat’s memory as well, and probably never see Ginny again.
Ginny. His heart yearned for her and anxiety nibbled at him anew. In this standoff, members of the Irish Squad had become his runners—they possessed both the endurance and the intelligence for it. He’d sent them out everywhere like collies herding in all the automatons who would come and keeping an eye on the human contingent. He’d also asked them to look out for Ginny and Dennis Petersen.
No word yet. No word yet.
As he stood on the edge of the stone fountain overlooking the assembly—steamies big and small, many of the silver bodies reflecting the garish morning light—he wondered where she was.
He whispered, very like a charm or a prayer, “Please. Keep her safe.”
****
“Quiet. Don’t even breathe.”
Obediently, Dennis Petersen sucked in his gut. The two of them—he and Ginny—stood smashed up against a wall in an alley off Auburn Street, carriage houses on either side. Ginny suspected Mrs. Klemmer must have sicced their pursuers after them; the band of five humans had picked them up soon after they left her house. Of course it could be pure chance; humans seemed to be everywhere in the city—mainly groups here and there, as well as a larger body that she’d glimpsed farther east. Ginny had heard the sound of breaking glass before she and Dennis ran in this direction, and she thought she’d also caught a rumble as of far-off voices. It might have been thunder, but now the sun began to rise in an orb that bled orange across the sky.
“What’s that?” Dennis gasped in defiance of Ginny’s instructions. The young officer sounded spooked, and Ginny couldn’t blame him. She saw it too—a flash of silver between the carriage houses on the far side of the alley, then another and another. All heading in one direction.
What the hell?
She had no time to ponder it further. At the far end of the alley appeared two figures. Swiveling her head she saw three more at the nearer end. Their pursuers had split up in order to trap them.
Dennis gurgled, “Shit, miss. We’re going to die.”
“No we’re not.” Not before Ginny saw Brendan Fagan again, at leastgazed into those blue eyes of his and told him she couldn’t live without him. Because she loved him, loved him.
The words became a song in her head—a battle anthem.
“Do you have your cosh?”
“Yeah, but—”
But. Yes, their pursuers came well-armed with wha
t looked like long metal poles. Ginny’s racing thoughts supplied the word pikes. She didn’t doubt they had knives, too. Probably clubs. These lowlifes usually did.
“We’re going to fight,” she told Dennis. “When they come at us, holler. Can you holler? Loud and intimidating.”
“I’m not sure.”
His throat would be dry, just like hers. She gave him one understanding look and said, “You take on the two; I’ll take the three. Follow my lead.”
She drew the small steam cannon from the long pocket of her coat—the same she’d employed at the bar that first night she met Brendan. Dennis’s eyes boggled.
See now we have a chance, she wanted to tell him. There was no time. Their assailants moved in from either end at a dead run.
Ginny screamed an ear-splitting screech that reverberated off the buildings of the alley. Her first blast took one of the three attackers in the middle of his chest with force enough to make him pirouette before he fell. His pike dropped from his hands with a clatter; his two fellows swore and came on.
The trouble with steam cannons, Ginny reflected even as she heard Dennis bellow behind her—good man!—was even the best of them took precious moments to recharge. It hadn’t seemed so long, back in the tavern, while she’d been busy aggravating what she thought of as a strait-laced policeman. Now, with maiming, pain, and possible death bearing down on her, it became an eon.
She heard grunting behind her as Dennis employed his cosh. She dared not look at him—her assailants’ features became clearer as they neared.
The one on the right hollered, “It’s her—that Landry bitch! Her ma’s the one made them whore machines. Get her!”
Ginny looked into his eyes—square into the wild blaze of hate.
And shot him.
The cannon, not yet fully charged, stuttered as it fired. Yet at the range of only a few feet the blast had strength enough to kill, especially as it took the man in the throat, partially vaporizing the skin and setting what lay beneath on fire.
The man went down in a heap; Ginny and his companion looked at one another. A big ugly fellow, he had a bald head and fleshy lips that hung open—perhaps in surprise. The surprise deserted him when he decided her cannon wouldn’t fire again so soon. Not before he got his hands on her.
Ginny could hear Dennis struggling behind her and dared a single look; he had one assailant down and clutching his knee. But Dennis now lay on his back with the last man standing over him.
Oh, God, oh, God, how were they going to get out of this?
Brendan. Loved him, loved him, loved…
She lifted the spent sidearm between her hands and swung.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph,” Brendan swore in wonder. A sea of silver surrounded him where he stood, only slightly elevated at the center of the square. Someone—a member of the Irish Squad he thought, though he couldn’t be sure—had found a bullhorn and pressed it into his hands. Facing east, the direction from which the human contingent would come, the dreadful red sunrise filled his eyes. But from behind he could smell the river, a scent that, like coalsmoke and steam, seemed to personify this city he loved.
Could a city be alive, an entity of itself? At the moment, holding the fate of this place by a string, he didn’t doubt it. Energy seemed to run beneath his very feet, fanning out under the streets like life’s blood.
If a being of steel could claim life, why not a city?
And if he were to die here on this morning beneath a sky colored blood red, would he consider it a life well spent? Maybe, but damn it, he wanted to live. To be with Ginny again.
He raised the bullhorn to his lips. “Ready yourselves. Here they come.”
Around him the sea of silver rippled like water. How many steamies occupied this city? It must be far more than he’d estimated, and an astounding number had managed to get away from their places of employment. In fact, they still streamed into the square behind him, mostly silent. Ahead of him…
The humans came in a dark body like floodwaters finding their way through the streets. As they reached the east side of the square, they slowed, a tide meeting a shore.
They would be armed with clubs, those wicked-looking pikes, and steam cannons too, if they’d been able to get their hands on some. Brendan wondered again where the police were in this. Merely overwhelmed? Or had the individual members, like him, taken sides?
Would the police airship come overhead before long? If it did, would it participate against one side or the other?
No time to think about that now. Ryan, one of the Irish Squad, popped up at his side, eyes wide and reflecting the red dawn.
“Just a few stragglers coming in,” he reported. “We outnumber them, but they are armed.” He slanted a surprisingly human look at Brendan. “You sure we should not fight back?”
“We can’t fight back; we can only stand. We’re proving a point here, lad—that steamies aren’t the source of the violence in this city.”
“We’ve always fought back in self-defense. Even in the Candace Landry incident.”
“I know. And that’s what put flame to thatch in all this. We have to stand. Repel them, knock them down if we have to. No attack.”
“The units out front are going to take a beating.”
“I’m hoping they can be repaired, after.” Like Pat? Brendan turned his thoughts away from that. “If they don’t want to stay, they don’t have to.”
“They’ll stay.” Ryan’s eyes met Brendan’s again. “They want this. We all do.”
“Send your runners through the crowd. Tell them again, resistance—no violence. We’re taking this city by sheer numbers and determination, an unmovable force.”
Ryan slipped off silent as a shadow, leaving only the barest wisp of steam behind. If Brendan narrowed his eyes he could see a steam haze hanging over his side of the square, warring with that ugly, garish dawn. Though he hadn’t prayed for real in years, he closed his eyes and murmured words to…something. Not for himself but for those who stood so bravely around him, for Pat and for Ginny. Ginny, Ginny. Warm and alive in his arms, so much passion rushing at him. He needed to hold onto that—a grand last thought, if it came to it.
A man stepped forward from the crowd of humans facing him. Tall and well dressed, he carried not only a pike but a steam sidearm. With a jolt of shock, Brendan recognized him.
The police commissioner. Hell, how deep was the force involved in all this? He understood then. If the airship did fly over, he knew on just which army it would fire.
“Brendan Fagan!” the commissioner sang out. “Show yourself.”
“Right here, Mr. Messenberg.” Brendan certainly hadn’t been trying to hide.
Messenberg, a powerfully built man of perhaps fifty, scowled prodigiously. “Fagan, what are you doing in the middle of this? You’re a good cop. Come over to this side where you belong.”
Brendan straightened his battered body. “I am where I belong, sir, and that’s because I’m a good cop. I’m standing up for justice here.”
“Justice? You show me the justice in murderers going free just because some lawyer declares them exempt from the law. I was there on the airship that night—I saw those infernal units beat that woman to death at the Crystal Palace. Now they’re at liberty in this city—our city. They’re getting married and trying to adopt children, human children! Worst of all they want to construct others like themselves, infernal hybrids in their own image. It stops here, Fagan—or where will it end?”
Brendan bellowed back, “Justice in this city needs to encompass everyone—you’re right about that, sir. And that means adult, child, animal, and metal. Where’s the justice in an owner having the power to shut down a steam unit, as Mrs. Landry threatened that night? I’m not saying what happened to her was right, sir, but those units were living in slavery, and abused slaves tend to revolt.”
“Curse you for a steam-loving turncoat!” Messenberg snarled.
“Curse me all you
like, but we’re going to stand here till we get some measure of just treatment for these units. That means rights. And we understand with rights come consequences. Steam units will become subject to the law—just like those who employ them. Not own, Mr. Messenberg, but employ.”
“You’re mad,” Messenberg shouted. “Why should we pay for services we’ve always had for free?”
“Because it’s right. Look around you, Mr. Messenberg. Every one of these units has come from a business or household in this city. What if they all refused to work? A stoppage would bring this city to its knees.”
“Maybe so, but we won’t be blackmailed. This city’s still ours—we’ll prove that here and now if we have to.”
Ryan popped back up beside Brendan. “Airship’s aloft.”
Aye, and no doubt well-loaded with steam cannon. Brendan looked out over the crowd of steam units that surrounded him. In the growing light of the garish dawn, it stirred and flexed like a living thing.
“Fagan,” Messenberg called again, “disperse these units, or I swear you’ve worked your last day on the force.”
He could do that—disperse them. He could use Pat’s authority to send them all home, put an end to the rebellion…for now. But he suspected it would just flare up once more, like a smoldering fire.
Ryan, still at his side, looked to him, as did many of the steamies. The very city seemed to hold its breath, awaiting Brendan’s decision. And for that instant, time stood still.
****
The big brute Ginny faced in the alley caught the cannon as she swung it, twisted and wrested it from her hands. Dismay washed over her in a wave so intense it stole her breath.
Oh, God, she was going to die here in this alley without ever seeing Brendan again.
Behind her, from the ground, came a sickening sound as Dennis’s head got smashed against the bricks of the alley one last time. Dead? Ginny didn’t know—unconscious, at the very least.
She stood alone.
The big, ugly brute reached out and seized her by the arm. “You stupid bitch. How come you’re not on our side? Them thugs beat your ma to death.”
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