The Flux Engine

by Dan Willis

  It was risky, but she couldn’t leave without her gear.

  Taking a deep breath, Robi made her decision. Darting up from a crouch, she ran across the roof and leapt the gap between it and the next building. Without stopping she continued from roof to roof until she ran into a warehouse, its roof at least ten feet above the one she was on.

  Without slowing or stopping, she jumped down, hitting the opposite wall and then pushing immediately off. She crossed the gap again, hitting the wall of the building she started from and pushing off again. One more jump brought her down, light as a cat, into the alley between the buildings. An old miner with a dirty beard and a half finished bottle of whiskey stared at her as if she were some apparition coughed up from the pits of Hell but she paid him no mind. Throwing caution to the wind, she gathered up the skirts of her stolen dress and ran as hard as she could.

  O O O

  The oriental hotel was a two story wooden building painted a deep sapphire blue. It had been one of the best hotels in town in its day, but those days were firmly behind it. Now the floors creaked, the washbasins leaked, and the carpets were worn and threadbare. Robi had picked it as a joke, considering her heritage. The man who owned the place was named Roscoe, a wall-eyed, shriveled little man who hadn’t raised an eyebrow when Robi signed the register “‘Wendy Smith’.”

  “Evening, Miss Smith,” he said as Robi charged in through the front door. “I take it you’ll be checking out!” he yelled after her as she continued straight up the steps to the second floor.

  “Got a train to catch,” she shouted back, hoping Roscoe wasn’t too familiar with the local schedule.

  Since she never really unpacked, Robi didn’t have much to do when she reached her room. Scooping the few possessions she’d left out into her small bag, she slung it over her shoulder, then grabbed the small suitcase made of carpet. It wasn’t much, but it had once belonged to her father, and it was all she had.

  Pausing long enough to take a deep breath, Robi turned and ran. John and Hickok would be somewhere nearby. All she had to do was find them and follow them out of town without getting caught.

  How hard could that be?

  The enforcer was the key to finding them.

  Wild Bill Hickok had made quite a name for himself. According to what Robi read in the newspapers he was tough, tenacious, and deadly fast with a gun. People want to catch a glimpse of a man like that. They want to remember him.

  Somebody knew where he was staying in town. He’d have to go there to gather his belongings. If she were lucky, she’d get there before he and John had a chance to leave.

  Shouldering her tool bag, Robi did her best not to simply run down the street. Her eyes swept the crowd of people going about their business, darting back and forth seeking familiar faces. There were none to be found. She asked a few random passersby if they knew where the famous lawman might be staying, but none did.

  The minutes darted by with alarming swiftness.

  Think.

  Someone knows where Hickok lodged, but who? The newspapers always reported on him, why weren’t these people more …

  The newspapers.

  One of the first things Robi did when arriving at a new town was to check the local newspaper office and familiarize herself with the proprietor and anyone that might work for him. It wouldn’t do to accidentally say the wrong thing to a newspaper man, to say nothing of lifting his wallet.

  Robi ran.

  The newspaper office was one block up and three over. The hotels in this part of town were nicer than most, each with a skydock running around their upper levels so private airships could dock. As she ran, Robi passed under the bodies of several of the wooden craft, rocking in the wind like ships on the tide. Focused as she was, however, Robi took only passing notice, arriving at the office of the Sprocketville Observer in what had to be record time.

  She paused for a moment to slow her breathing, then opened the door. A lean man in a pinstriped vest looked up from a typewriter, peering nearsightedly at Robi through thick spectacles. The desk and the typewriter were neat and clean and the man’s clothes were unstained with ink.

  Fastidious. Good attention to detail. Perfect.

  Robi smiled.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Mister …”

  “Tompkins,” the man said.

  “Right, Mister Tompkins,” Robi said, letting her voice slip into a flirty, helpless southern drawl. “I heard that Wild Bill Hickok was in town and I’d desperately love to get his autograph for my book. Would you happen to know where Mister Hickok might be lodgin’?”

  “Well, young lady, I understand Mister Hickok is staying at the Evening Star Hotel,” the man said in a high-pitched voice.

  “And where might I find the Evening Star?”

  “Why, it’s right across the street,” Tompkins said, pointing through his clean window.

  Robi turned. The Evening Star Hotel was a sturdy, three-story building surrounded by a wooden porch. Built of whitewashed adobe bricks of the entire hotel shone in the afternoon sun. A wooden skydock extended from the uppermost story, running from one side, around the back, to the other.

  A single airship hung in the air, bigger than the usual rich man’s launch with a cabin and galley below and a thick smoke stack rising up through the deck. This airship was fifty feet long if it was an inch. Its nose pointed down, like the beak of a bird of prey. About halfway along its deck, a second level rose up and continued all the way aft, broken only by an enormous round window. Two sets of propellers, mounted on long outriggers, were raised up like masts so the ship could dock. As Robi watched, a cloud of dark smoke belched out of its single stack.

  “I’m afraid you might be too late,” Tompkins said as the airship began to move, drifting lazily away from the skydock. “That’s his airship there.”

  Robi let out a very unladylike swear and darted out the door. The airship hadn’t yet cleared the rooftops, if she hurried, she might be able to—

  “Well hello again, girly.”

  Rough hands seized Robi mid-stride and she was jerked off her feet to face the deputy with the still-bleeding face.

  “Not so tricky now that I got you,” he said. “You made me look all the fool before, but this time I got you good.”

  Chapter 10

  Blood and Sand

  Raphael Kest stood on his private balcony high atop the temple of glass and looked out over his city. Panor existed in the bowels of the Icewall, a mile-high glacier more than a hundred miles wide that ran from the ice fields of Northern America all the way to the pole. The city itself occupied the floor of a natural cavern that reminded Kest of nothing so much as an enormous bathtub. Tightly packed buildings jammed the icy floor and ran up the walls in stepped terraces that had been cut from the ice. Diffuse blue light filtered down from the glacier above, giving just enough illumination to reveal the spires and roofs of the city below.

  “Excuse me, my lord,” a wheedling voice said from behind him.

  None of the priests of the temple would have dared to disturb Kest here; this balcony was part of his private sanctuary, off limits to everyone. Therefore …

  “Hello, Carroway,” Kest said with a sigh. He’d been enjoying the quiet solitude until the interruption.

  “Forgive me for disturbing you,” Carroway said in an ingratiating tone. “But I bring news that I believe you’ll find interesting.”

  Kest doubted that. He turned to find the small, officious-looking man in a green coachman’s coat standing patiently by the door to his chambers. Carroway had a small, bushy mustache that emphasized, rather than distracted from, his too-close-together eyes. The top of his head was bald, running down to a thin band of hair that encircled the back. He carried a small leather-bound book under one arm and a pair of pince-nez spectacles in the other.

  “The harbor master just received a docking request from Sira.”

  Kest paused, considering the possible implications of the little man’s news.

&n
bsp; “Has she been successful then?” He kept his voice flat and even.

  “I don’t know, but she is returning ahead of schedule,” Carroway said.

  “Bring me my spyglass.”

  Carroway reached into his voluminous coat and withdrew a long, leather-wrapped tube.

  “I anticipated your need,” he said, handing the spyglass over.

  “Was there something else?” Kest asked, briefly scanning the city with the spyglass. It would be several minutes before Sira arrived.

  “I have an etheriogram from Derek Morgan,” Carroway said. Kest lowered the glass.

  “Read it,” he said without turning.

  There was a tearing noise as Carroway opened the brown envelope.

  “He says that Sira does, indeed, have the bloodsand stone,” Carroway said, scanning the message. “Morgan interrogated the previous owner, a boy named John Porter, who claimed to have gotten the stone from his mother.”

  Kest’s wandering focus snapped back to the conversation.

  “His mother?” he asked, turning to the little man.

  Carroway shrugged and nodded.

  “That’s what it says.”

  “Where is this boy now?”

  Carroway scanned the paper quickly, muttering to himself as he went. “Here it is. Morgan intended to bring the boy here, but he escaped with the aid of Wild Bill Hickok.”

  “Damn it,” Kest sword. “Hickok is working for that flea-bitten psychic in Castle Rock.”

  It wasn’t really a question, but Carroway nodded anyway.

  “He’ll pull Sira’s image right out of the boy’s head,” he said.

  Kest sighed. The psychic was beginning to become a real problem.

  “Is there anything else?”

  “Morgan asks if you wish him to go after Hickok and attempt to retrieve or kill the boy?”

  “Tell him to use his own discretion,” Kest said, turning back to look out over the city.

  He heard the door open and close as Carroway left, then Kest raised the spyglass to his eye. He focused on the far end of the cavern where a dark opening yawned in the wall. The natural fissure beyond ran for over a mile to the edge of the icewall itself, where a projected illusion hid the entrance. Even as he watched, Kest could see the marker lights wink on, illuminating the entrance tunnel. A tiny, one-man airship emerged a moment later, turning gracefully over the city, heading for the Temple docks.

  A wide shelf ran around the upper part of the cavern, supporting the long frameworks of skydocks that jutted out over the city. A dozen different airships were moored in various places, bobbing in the air as crews moved cargo into and out of their holds. Beyond the docks, warehouses and other storage spaces had been cut into the glacier, served by a small rail system that circled the cavern like a belt.

  Kest lowered his spyglass, looking over the balcony railing as Sira guided her airship into an open slip several stories below. A crew of initiates from the Temple swarmed over the little boat as soon as it docked, tying it off and dropping a heavy, wooden gangplank in place.

  He turned from the scene before Sira emerged. He mustn’t seem too anxious. His position as Shokhlar, the living prophet of the Mimbrae people, required a certain amount of dispassionate reserve.

  He crossed the little balcony and went back inside, to his office. Paneling of polished cherry covered the walls, running from the main door, around the circular room, to a raised platform at the far end that held his massive desk. He crossed to the desk and sat down, straightening up the various stacks of reports, notes, and communiqués. It wouldn’t do to receive the crystal he’d spent so long seeking with a messy desk. The proprieties must be observed. He had just finished when there was a knock at the door.

  “That was fast,” he said to himself. To the door, he said, “Come.”

  The initiate outside opened the door. Sira stood outside, flushed and disheveled, but beaming. She must have run the entire way from the docks. Before the young man had the door all the way open, she brushed past him and advanced on Kest’s desk.

  “Shokhlar,” she said, kneeling before the dais that held his desk. “I have returned, and I have performed the task you gave me.”

  She held out her hands, revealing a small red crystal.

  Despite himself, Kest held his breath, not daring to speak. He’d spent a decade hunting for it and now, at last, it was within his grasp. He waved her forward, and Sira darted up to the dais, depositing the crystal in Kest’s outstretched hand.

  It was smaller than he had expected, almost delicate.

  “Tell me how you found it, Sira,” he said. “Leave nothing out.”

  Sira stood before his desk and recounted her tale of tracking the crystal to Sprocketville, then getting a lucky break when the boy who had it had used it, leading her right to its hiding place. When she finished, Kest reexamined the crystal.

  “You have done well, Sira,” he said. She glowed with pride and bowed to him again. “Now, let’s see about this crystal,” he said.

  Sira’s face fell. Kest had forgotten how fanatical she was.

  “It’s been a long time since I last saw this crystal,” he explained. “We must see if it still retains its properties. The boy could have damaged it.”

  “Yes, Shokhlar,” she said, mollified.

  Kest moved around his massive desk to a series of cabinets that lined the back wall, reaching for their doors. Behind one set of doors, a large metal device with many crystals, arms, and clockwork mechanisms squatted like a giant glittering insect. He placed the crystal into one of the outstretched arms, then pulled a lever on the device’s side. The cogs and gears began to turn as the device came up to speed, then suddenly the crystal began to sing.

  Kest closed his eyes and listened as the sound echoed throughout the room. It reverberated off the paneled walls and echoed back from the marble floor. After a moment, the song was picked up by the crystals in the machine, rising and blending into complex harmony.

  It was a sound of joy, of life, of pure creation, and Kest reveled in it.

  The spring powering the machine wound down, sending the music sliding into a cacophony of atonal sounds as it lost energy. But even after the noise had ceased, its memory seemed to echo through the room.

  “Thank you, Sira,” he said, turning back to her. “You have done our people a great service.”

  She knelt before him, pressing her forehead to the floor.

  “I live to serve, my lord.”

  “Rise then, for you have done so,” he said. “I will be going to the airship immediately. Take time to refresh yourself, then join me aboard in the crystal chamber.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Sira said, then stood, bowed again, and withdrew. As she went out, Carroway came back in, pushing the door closed after her.

  “I’ve sent your reply to Morgan,” he said. “Did Sira find the right crystal?”

  “Of course she did,” Kest replied. “I’d know it anywhere. You can practically hear it vibrating without the machine.”

  “And what of the boy Morgan mentioned?” Carroway said. “Do you really believe dear Lissa had a child?”

  “It’s possible.” Kest shrugged.

  “Not yours, is he?”

  “No,” Kest said. “Lissa and I were never that close.”

  “Do you think she’s still alive?” Carroway asked.

  “Why would the boy have it if she were?” He shrugged.

  Carroway nodded but said nothing. Kest sat heavily in his overstuffed chair, holding the crystal up to the light.

  “Go tell Captain Raff to stoke the boilers,” Kest said. “Once I install this in the Flux engine, I want to get under way.”

  Carroway smiled but didn’t move. “I suspect the good captain will be thrilled to learn that the restoration of his homeland is at hand. Never mind the fact that his ancestors lived in the Mississippi Valley, not out in the salt flats of Desert Star.”

  Kest laughed.

  “Yes, I suspect Captain Raff w
ould disapprove of our plan if he knew the truth.”

  “It simply amazes me how easily you’ve turned these people’s faith into a weapon that serves your own ends,” Carroway said. “I wonder how they’d react if they knew who you really are—what you really are.”

  Kest ground his teeth in irritation. The little man was absolutely insufferable.

  “Get to your point, Carroway.”

  “I’m just wondering when we are going to get rid of these religious fanatics,” he said. “Sooner or later one of them is going to catch on to you and then the jig will be up. We’ll be lucky to escape with our lives.”

  “Listen to me carefully, Carroway,” Kest said, his voice dropping to a menacing whisper. “They’re never going to find out the truth. I’m going to have them marching along beside me all the way, till I’m the sole Lord of the entire Earth.”

  “I don’t understand why you want it,” Carroway said, inspecting his cuticles. “Ruling the world takes effort; there’s always some upstart or other you’ve got to keep in line. On the other hand, once you have the source of Red Sand, all the world will beat a path to your door for it and pay you outrageously to get it. You’ll have all the wealth and power you could want without the headaches of running the world.”

  “You’re right,” Kest said. “You don’t understand.” He stood up and began to pace. “Every day people go about their lives doing whatever they think is best for them. The problem is that most of them are too stupid or too ignorant to know what’s best.”

  “I suppose that’s where you come in,” Carroway said.

  “Who better than the finest mind on Earth to tell people what’s best? I’m the greatest Architect the world has ever known,” Kest said. “There’s a reason the Builder blessed Architects with superior intellect, Carroway. It’s so we can help those lesser lights among us to live happy, productive lives. Look around you. The world is full of conflict, strife, inequity, and war—all because people make poor decisions. The war between Britannia and the Colonies destroyed the entire east coast. The Lantians destroyed the Aztecs and then themselves. All these things could have been avoided if lesser men would simply yield to their betters.”