A Midsummer Night's Steampunk

by Scott E. Tarbet

  “I’ll be on hand in the wings with my script, waiting to prompt you, should you forget.”

  Snug nodded at this logical solution.

  “Let me play the lion, too,” interrupted Bottom. “My roar is magnificent!” He filled his bellows—

  “No, no, no!” interrupted Quince. “You would blow the queen’s umbrella inside out! We can’t have the first mechs’ performance at the palace knock the audience from their seats. We’d be hanged . . . or worse. I can only imagine the punishment for our kind.”

  Most of the others, sobered by the thought, fortified themselves with their pints. Starveling took a sip of light lubricating oil.

  “Cheer up, friends!” Quince exclaimed. “We will be a success. We have to be! The queen will be touched by our tale, and mechs will be considered for all future entertainments! Maybe, if we show very well indeed, mechs will be allowed on streetcars. Who knows: we might even be allowed to work in shops and on the street instead of only in factories. Out where people can get accustomed to us and learn not to be afraid.”

  Everyone nodded at this cheerful thought.

  “Right, then! We must rehearse to perfection! Let us meet for rehearsal right here tomorrow after work!

  “A toast, mates! To the play!”

  “Huzzah!” everyone shouted. They all agreed it would be a performance to remember.

  ToC

  There was never a Queen like Balkis,

  From here to the wide world’s end;

  But Balkis talked to a butterfly

  As you would talk to a friend.

  There was never a King like Solomon,

  Not since the world began;

  But Solomon talked to a butterfly

  As a man would talk to a man.

  She was Queen of Sabaea—

  And he was Asia’s Lord—

  But they both of ’em talked to butterflies

  When they took their walks abroad.

  —True Royalty, by Rudyard Kipling

  Chapter Four

  A Trip to the City

  A cricket sawed her slow, rhythmic song in the warm depths of the Oil Can Pub, blissfully singing the beauty of the night to the uncomprehending humans. That they understood nothing mattered not at all. Beauty was beauty, and deserved a song. The proprietor, barmaid, and scattered patrons smiled at the good luck of a cricket in the house.

  The door flew open, and Nick Bottom stomped over to the table where Starveling sat. “Robin!” he huffed. “My new kite is coming apart at the seams! See? I was just out flying it, blowing real gentle, and it’s falling apart.”

  “What? How can that be?” Starveling moaned. He snatched the kite from Bottom’s hand and peered at it closely. The seams were coming apart as Bottom had said. The fine striped silk was sound and strong, just as Francis Flute made it day after day, yard after yard. But the seams were loose and getting looser.

  “Drat!” Starveling exclaimed, handing the kite back. “I don’t understand it, Nick. I’m slipping stitches. This just shouldn’t be.” He pulled up a cover plate on his chest and peered inside, inserted a long, thin screwdriver, and extracted several small screws and delicate-looking, highly polished steel parts.

  “What in the world are those?” asked Bottom. “They look like bones. Tiny little crooked bones.”

  “They might as well be, for all the good they’re doing me,” Starveling said. “I can’t seem to get them adjusted properly and keep them that way. I spent hours out of production today, trying to get them right. None of the other mechs in the factory are built exactly this way, so none of them could help. The foreman docked me half a day’s wages. Six hours. I’ve got to get fixed somehow.”

  “Who can help you?”

  “That’s just it: I’m an early model, one of the first.” He paused, his voice dropping to a whisper. “—one of the first tailor-mechs Doctor Malieux put together. Many of my parts he brought to South Africa with him directly from India.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “Too right!”

  Bottom shuddered. “Even if he could repair you, it would mean going to that blasted madhouse and begging for help. There’s no telling what else he would do to you whilst he had you in the workshop. You would be at his mercy.”

  The two friends were still staring disconsolately at the unfortunate kite as the rest of their little band came in. Flute was first to pick up the flyer and examine it closely, turning it over and over in his hands. “Slipped stitches. Not my fault,” he pronounced, as Quince, Snout, and Snug peered over his shoulders. He handed it back to Bottom.

  Poor Robin’s voice caught as he exclaimed, “Of course not. The fault is mine. And there is nothing I can do about it. I’ve tried and tried. Soon the foreman is going to throw me out of the factory. I’ll starve. I suppose I have no other option. I have to go to Malieux.”

  “No, mate, you can’t do that,” said Peter Quince quietly. “There has to be another way. No one comes out the same when that man gets tinkering.”

  “But what choice do I have?” protested Starveling. “It’s the madhouse or the scrap heap.” The little group stared at the kite, downcast, for several long moments.

  Snug finally broke the silence. “Well, at least the cricket is a pleasant thing.”

  “Did you know,” asked Bottom, ever a fount of knowledge, “that a cricket in the house has been considered a sign of good luck all the way back to the ancient Mesopalavians?”

  “Really?” exclaimed Quince. “I didn’t know that. But I’m not a well-read classical scholar like you, Nick.”

  “It’s a natural gift,” Bottom replied humbly.

  “But that there cricket isn’t from here, or even ancient Thesopahuvia,” said Snug. “She’s from Inja.”

  “Wait, where?” asked Snout.

  “Inja . . . oh, wait . . . I misheard. She said ‘India.’ ”

  The whole group turned slowly to look at their woodworking friend.

  “It’s a cricket, you barmy git,” Bottom chided. “It don’t talk. It rubs its legs together.”

  “Oh, no! She talks. Her name is Cobweb. She’s from India. She likes British pubs.”

  There was a long silence, broken by Snout calling loudly for a pint of bitters and a shot of clockwork oil for his friend. “Snug is not well. Get him some lubrication. Quick!”

  Snug accepted the pint-and-shot with a smile. “Thank you! Cobweb says it is nice to see that I have such good friends.”

  “Snug,” said Bottom, impatiently, “that cricket is an insect. An insect, Snug. Insects don’t talk.”

  “Oh, no! She’s not an insect . . . at least not anymore. She says she started out as a regular cricket, but that the queen showed her the light and changed her forever.” He downed his shot of oil and continued, “She wants to know if you want to see her up close.”

  No one knew what to say, so they all nodded. Without setting down his bitters, Snug activated the scissor lifts in his legs, rose toward the ceiling, and reached his hand up on top of the rough-hewn beam that traversed the room. He pulled his hand back with a large, blue-green cricket riding on top, unlike any the group had ever seen. “Very nice to make your acquaintance,” he said to her politely as he lowered them both to table height.

  In response, the cricket spread iridescent wings, orbited noisily around the room above the group, and settled back on Snug’s hand. Up close, they saw that her normal cricket shell glistened like something even harder, almost metallic, but still thin and light. And it was easy to see how complex the motions of her legs were, making sounds far more subtle and varied than any normal cricket song.

  “She says it ain’t polite to stare. And why should you all be surprised that an insect can be made to think and talk and fly, when men can be made to have hands and teeth and chests and legs of steel?”

  This gave everyone pause for thought.

  “She does have a point, there,” said Bottom, finally. “Please give her my kind regards and ask her why she’s hanging ab
out here at the Oil Can.”

  “She understands you just fine, Nick,” said Snug, interpreting as the cricket sang along. “You can talk directly to her—you just can’t understand her. She says this is the best place to put her feet up while it’s someone else’s turn to watch.”

  “Watch what?”

  Snug listened, and blanched at the reply. “She says . . .” he stammered, “she says they’re watching them monsters at the madhouse.” There was a stunned silence as the friends digested this information, but Cobweb just kept on talking.

  “Please don’t go to the madhouse for repairs, Robin,” Snug interpreted. “Nothing good can come of going anywhere near. ‘One sees more devils there than vast hell can hold,’ she says. Whatever that means.”

  “Well, what can I do, then?” protested Starveling.

  “She says there’s another way: a master artificer in the city. Knightsbridge. Called Spiegel. Goddaughter of the queen.”

  “Queen Victoria ain’t got no goddaughter who’s an artificer!” objected Bottom. “We’d have heard.”

  “Not Queen Victoria of England, Queen Lakshmi of . . . well, of the rest of the world,” interpreted Snug. “This Pauline Spiegel can fix Starveling if anyone can. And he don’t have to go near Malieux and his madhouse.”

  “Knightsbridge is a long way from Bethnal Green,” noted Quince, “and Robin ain’t never been down to the center of London. Likely as not, he’ll get his sorry arse quite lost.”

  Cobweb gave an emphatic chirp.

  “Cobweb says we all must go along,” Snug announced, “all the way to the center of the city. She’ll go along to make introductions.”

  The group was silent for a moment, considering this. “Can’t do it,” Quince said firmly. “Fearful long way to tote an anvil. I’m built to work in one place all day every day, not to walk about the city. Too heavy. Me old knees is giving out as it is.”

  Snout had the answer: “We will borrow a cart and take you in turns,” he declared, “and sometimes you can walk. A little.”

  “I’ll pull you on the cart, Peter,” offered Starveling, lifting and spinning his wheels. The thought of a jaunt across the city actually seemed to cheer him.

  “You don’t think we’re all daft, do you, Bottom,” Quince asked, “traipsing the width of London, on the word of a joiner who says he’s getting his information from an Indian insect?”

  “Well—” said Nick.

  Cobweb trilled.

  “She says,” Snug interpreted, “that if you two are such dimmicks that you won’t take a little walk to save a friend, stay home tomorrow and go to church.”

  Bottom and Quince stared at him, their mouths open.

  “Oy! Barman!” called Bottom. “The grease gun, if you please. A long way to roll tomorrow.”

  “Aye! All of us will need the grease gun tonight,” agreed Quince. “None of us goes much further every day than home to the factory to the pub and back.”

  “I would like to ride the Underground,” sighed Starveling, “if mechs was allowed on them trains. Mechs can dig, but can’t ride.”

  Cobweb sang. “If wishes was fishes, we’d all have a fry,” Snug said. “There’s nothing for it then but to walk. Good thing tomorrow morning is Sunday, so no work. Three hours to walk it. What say we leave at first light?”

  ~*~*~*~*~

  Sunday’s dawn found the friends assembled on the Bethnal Green High Street. “It’s the Lord’s day, Nick Bottom!” called a vicar from the steps of a nearby church. “Where away?”

  “Off to see the other vicar down the road!” sang back Bottom, who thought nothing of tweaking the nose of a clergyman. “Do-gooders,” he sniffed. “More churches than public houses in this neighborhood. It ain’t right.”

  Starveling rolled happily along, leading the procession, pulling Quince on a brick cart borrowed from a hod-carrying neighbor. Bottom marched alongside, giving new instructions at every turning, which Starveling ignored as often as not, but Bottom never seemed to notice.

  Cobweb rode on the brim of Snug’s best Sunday outing hat, a snappy straw boater with a wide blue, white, and red ribbon. She sang Snug a compliment.

  “My hat? Up-to-date and modern? Why, thank you, Miss! I do try,” he said. “We likes hats, we. Most all the clothes we has.

  “What’s that? No, most of us has been refit too far from normal shape for any sort of clothing. Every mech is a different size, shape, and function. Them what’s got private bits left to cover manage somehow with canvas or burlap or leather. Not many of those. Yeah, we like our hats.”

  Tom Snout walked close by, biting off chunks of firewood and chewing for a few moments. He would then spit out little wooden soldiers and horses, carriages and steam engines. And miniature airships so realistic, so like the dirigibles of the Royal Navy, that the street urchins exclaimed over each prize as he doled them out to whatever child happened to be at hand. As a result, he had a constantly shifting coterie of children close on his heels as he went.

  Francis Flute trailed the group, as he always did, absentmindedly weaving as he walked. As usual, he was festooned with large bobbins of silk, so many that they completely disguised his slight build, gradually becoming a wide bolt of cloth across his back. No one had ever seen him stop for long. So habitual was his weaving that he would sit in the Oil Can of an evening, weaving and chatting, even after his normal twelve-hour shift at the mill. Only on a very special occasion did a sociable drink cross his lips, because, he said, nobody wanted cloth with flaws because the weaver’s mind was clouded.

  He was off in his own world, hypnotized by his work, when the group crossed Shoreditch High Street. Snout’s entourage of young followers abruptly fell away, frightened off by older boys. “Oy! Y’glocky mech!” one of them shouted at him. “Get back to Barmy Green! Motherless metal monster! Freak!” Robin hastened his pace a bit, and the others followed suit.

  To Cobweb’s inquiry, Snug replied, “They’re just children, y’ see. Afeared, they are. Don’t know no better. No mechs in Shoreditch—we stay close to each other and to our jobs in Bethnal Green.”

  He ducked as a horse apple flew past his head, and immediately put his hand up to check on his passenger, but she had flown up and away, above the pursuing urchins, chirping a loud, piercing alarm. She alone had noticed that Francis Flute’s preoccupied stroll had dropped him behind the main group. By the time they became conscious of the danger, he was surrounded by boys from the street, many of whom were nearly as tall as he, and pelting him from all sides with clods and horse apples. Their jeers and taunts drowned out Flute’s pleas.

  Snout and Bottom charged back to their embattled friend. With a roar of gears and clash of the chisels and knives that filled the lower half of his face, Snout shoved the rest of the log of firewood he carried into his mouth, ground it to small chunks, and stung Flute’s tormenters one after another with wooden pellets. Bottom inhaled fully, and let loose a blast of air that would have blown the forge white-hot, knocking several of the urchins into the dirt. The boys quickly took to their heels and melted down the side streets.

  The mechs gathered solicitously around their threatened friend. “Francis,” chided Quince, “we are not at home in Bethnal Green anymore. You must look about you.”

  Flute stood mournfully but silently brushing clods and manure from himself, with special care for the skeins and woven cloth. Snout fired the last of the chips at the fleeing hooligans and patted Francis’ shoulder.

  “Quince,” he said, “Francis was born and raised in Shoreditch. Right down that road there.”

  “Is that right, Flute?” Quince asked.

  Francis nodded, a stricken look clouding his features, gazing off down the street where the boys had fled.

  “He was a musician, weren’t you, Francis?”

  “Violinist,” muttered Flute.

  “Studied at the Conservatory and played in the great halls of the city. But couldn’t support his mother and sister on it, so he went for a soldier
.”

  Quince frowned. He could tell the direction this story was going, and it was far too familiar, far too like his own, for his comfort.

  Francis looked as if he would rather Snout just let the whole matter drop, but he kept right on. “When he came back from the war all turned into a sewing machine, his mother and sister visited him just the once in the hospital, no longer than to wish him luck and tell him he had to find lodging in Bethnal Green, because they couldn’t have a mech in their home.”

  Flute held up a silencing hand. “I was one of them boys what came after me just now, right here on this street.” He spoke so quietly, the others had to strain to hear him. “For all I know, me mam and sis still live just around the corner.” Suddenly, it was just too much. He pulled a length of cloth over his head for a moment, until he regained his composure. “I’m sorry about your wood,” he told Snout. “We’ll find you more. Thank you for coming to help. And thank you, too, Nick.”

  It was a solemn group that resumed its trek toward the center of the city, the Sunday outing feeling gone temporarily, until Starveling began singing a tune they all knew from the music hall:

  A sweet tuxedo girl you see

  A queen of swell society

  Fond of fun as fond can be

  When it’s on the strict Q.T.

  I’m not too young, I’m not too old

  Not too timid, not too bold

  Just the kind you’d like to hold

  Just the kind for sport, I’m told

  Ta-ra-ra Boom-di-ay!

  Ta-ra-ra Boom-di-ay!

  Ta-ra-ra Boom-di-ay!

  Ta-ra-ra Boom-di-ay!

  Soon they all, even Flute with his high, fine voice, joined in all the verses. Their good spirits returned, and after a short pause in a vacant lot for winding and lubrication, the little group went on its way.

  ~*~*~*~*~

  They marched stolidly along, right through Cheapside, until they approached the Blackfriar Bridge over the Thames. There they had their first encounter with a round-hatted bobby, curious why they were so far from Bethnal Green.

  Quince stammered and stuttered, but Bottom answered huffily, “We are off to see the Artificer to the Queen, on Prince Gate Mews in Knightsbridge, my good man. We have business there.” The bobby looked them up and down, chuckled, and pointed them on their way, with a warning to be off home before dark.