The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk

by Sean Wallace

  The parachute fell over him, covering him like a shroud.

  The sound of squealing tires interrupted his respite. Soon he felt the silk being torn away and rough hands dragged him to his knees. He squinted into blinding headlights at the hulking silhouettes over him, the pitiful sound in his chest mercifully drowned out by the vehicle’s growling engine.

  His capacity for terror and pain exceeded for one night, Hieronymus felt only relief that now it might end. How many better men than him had been bundled into cars and never heard from again? And how many times had it been his hand on the steering wheel on those late night drives? His finger on the trigger once they arrived at the destination? By disposing of the names he had worn had been an attempt to keep such memories at bay, but when whenever dark thoughts claimed him, their cold phantom fingers stretched from the grave to settle on his neck, their whispers crossing time to caress his ears.

  “Hieronymus Dismas?” one silhouette asked, its recorded voice shrill.

  “Am I? I do not know. I only know that I am both a robber and the robbed.”

  A moment of awkward silence followed as they processed that information, but then the automatons executed their commands.

  “Hieronymus?” Rodrigo’s voice swam through the murk.

  He remained perfectly still.

  “I know you’re awake. You were talking in your sleep. Now open your eyes.”

  Resigned, he did as he was told, but he did not elsewise move. He was lying flat on his back on a cold steel table, covered by a sheer muslin sheet. His tongue probed the corner of his swollen mouth where the metal fists had struck him. He tasted blood.

  “I know you’ve seen her. What did she say? Tell me man, what she did say?”

  Without a word, he reached into his pants and produced the envelope. Rodrigo snatched it and ripped it open, reading the contents twice, running his finger vertically down the page. Rodrigo glanced past the page and parted his captive’s shirt, revealing the purple angry scar. He spoke in a hush.

  “I can’t believe she actually did that to you. During an argument once, she threatened to have her surgeon cut out my heart. I didn’t think she meant literally.”

  Then he added in an even quieter voice, “She’s capable of great malice when incensed.”

  “Who isn’t, Don Rodrigo?” His voice was spent.

  After a moment of silence, Rodrigo crumpled the paper in his fist and said, “The game is up. Her parents have arranged a marriage to the Duke of Segovia with an engagement celebration to be held in two days’ time. She has programmed her guards to shoot either of us on sight should we be seen on the festival grounds. There is no hope. Forgive me all of this nonsense. A quick death would have been a kinder fate than the trouble I’ve put you through.”

  Hieronymus stared at Rodrigo and, after a lengthy pause, spoke. “Last night you said I possessed the skill to break into any fortress. You must trust that the walls your lady has built around her are not impenetrable.”

  “Do you believe that?” Rodrigo sounded surprised.

  He fingered the metal teeth embedded in his chest and then shrugged without enthusiasm. “I have to believe that a stolen heart can be reclaimed. Or else, Don Rodrigo, I fear we are both lost.”

  The gypsies’ wagons rattled on the cobblestones as they wheeled cart after cart brimming with gourmet courses of suckling pig, delectable whole legs of jamón serrano, stews of calf, rabbit, and partridge, bushels of olives, and Valencian paella, each dish more decadent than the last. Others trucked along casks of ciders, beers, and the finest wines from every corner of the country. Led by an unusually tall man garbed in bright purple robes and a smaller figure in a humbler cloak of dark gray and an enormous round hat, they brought it all to the rear gates of the festival grounds. The chef and planner on site seemed more relieved than suspicious at these unexpected reinforcements and instantly began barking orders at their newfound charges.

  “That was almost too easy.What do we do now, Hieronymus?” whispered the man in purple, sweating under a generous layer of white face paint.

  The other man gritted his teeth. They had been over this countless times on the long walk from the caves of the Sacromonte and all through the market as they bought their provisions.

  “First of all, my name is Federico. Yours is Don Horacio. Best remember that. Secondly, we wait for our opening, just as we planned. Wait for my signal.”

  They had spent the past forty-eight hours rehearsing and Don Horacio had done better than Federico could have hoped, though his timing still needed refinement. They would need to be perfect for the plan to work, for failure meant death for the both of them. They watched as their band of gypsies, disguised in white serving coats, assumed their positions as they blended into the ranks of the bustling wait staff.

  “Stop fidgeting, Don Horacio. You’ll draw attention,” Federico commanded.

  “I can’t help it,” his opposite said, chewing his lip.

  “Act naturally. Let us converse. Answer me this, Don Horacio, for this question has been weighing on my mind and I should like to know the answer before I might die: how did your guards know that I would be at the Fin del Mundo? Who sold me out?”

  He had spent every free moment daydreaming, rehearsing the unspeakable things he would do with the traitor once he had ferreted him out. He had bided him time and was salivating for the answer.

  Until Don Horacio provided it.

  “A child, in fact.”

  Federico blinked. “A child? Who?”

  His ruse of starting a conversation had worked to steady Don Horacio’s nerves, and the other now let his gaze drift over the festival grounds full of bored faces, settling on the stage where Dolores sat between her parents, her expression creased in annoyance. Her face was powdered white and her hair stood tall on her head, a finely sculpted pillar. Her beauty trumped her scowl. A few seats to her left sat a prune of a man Federico guessed could only be her betrothed, the lucky duke.

  Distractedly, Don Horacio answered. “Some starving urchin orphaned in the war. She said her father knew you, once pointed you out to her and whispered your name in adulation. Finding someone to give you up was the most expensive part. She sold the secret quite cheaply. All it took was a few changes of clothes and all the food she could carry. However, fair warning: if you desire revenge, good luck finding her. She’s one of a thousand unwashed miscreants scrounging in the alleys. I don’t think she even had a name.”

  “Everyone has a name, Don Horacio,” Federico said quietly.

  A sudden wave of shame washed over him. He knew such children well and counted them among his family. He had always been quick to share with them a smile or a jape to bolster their spirits. He imagined he was preparing them to be ready foot soldiers in the next revolution, with their empty stomachs driving their devotion to the cause. Yet he had overlooked a more pressing need: perhaps they were hungry. He thought of the sheer amounts of money that had passed through his hands over the years as he liquidated stolen goods to foster bloodshed. Not once had he thought to spend a cent on a crust of bread for those he claimed so much to love.

  Federico cleared his throat and attempted to change the subject. “Where did you first meet Doña Dolores? Despite her temperament, she is a fine creature.”

  Don Horacio grinned and his eyes had a faraway look.

  “Some cotillion. I can’t even remember whose. Why the nobility insist upon inflicting each other with such painful social obligations I cannot say, but at least some good came from that one. If you call such a reckless, blinding love a ‘good’ I suppose. It turned out our fathers were business associates. I goaded mine into making an introduction. Dolores and I wandered the garden grounds talking until sunbreak. Her father was wroth when I returned her. I cowered in my apartment for a week fearing retribution. He’s an important comandante in the army you know.”

  Federico hadn’t known. “And your family? How did you come to money?”

  “Munitions. My grandfath
er invested in a factory at the turn of the century. Quite shrewd business, as it turns out. The world never runs out of need for bullets,” he said smugly.

  Federico suddenly felt ill. The hole in his chest widened into a chasm as he processed what he had learned, turning over in his mind his role in this violent web of rich man’s games. He had always fancied himself a spider, yet it turned out he was merely a fly. He stared dumbly at the painted face of the man before him, who was oblivious to his partner’s sudden change in demeanor until he glanced over. His face creased in worry. “Are you unwell, friend? You’ve turned white.”

  Federico clutched the other man’s wrist and whispered, “Steel your nerves. The time has come to reveal ourselves.”

  Without waiting for a response, Federico hooked his false beard over his clammy cheeks and fetched the guitar he’d had stashed beneath a shrub. He ignored Horacio’s tug on his shoulder as he climbed atop a table, clapping his hands and shouting, “Doña Dolores Josefa y Téllez-Girón de la Soledad, we are honored to perform in celebration of this most glorious day!”

  The crowd stiffened and went silent. Dolores’s father balked and the jawline of her mother’s plastic face ticked in alarm. A dozen truncheon-bearing automatons appeared from nowhere, advancing with programmed determination. The valve in his chest whined so loudly in his ears he feared it would give them away.

  Dolores, however, appeared bemused. She put her chin in her hand and sat forward. “Let him be,” she called to the guards. “For now.”

  Hieronymus clapped his hands thrice above his head. Hearing their cue, the gypsies cast off their serving coats and lifted their voices in sudden song. They flooded forward and formed a ring of clapping and stomping that slipped into a steady, driving rhythm. One gypsy tossed Hieronymus a chair and he sat, thrumming the strings of his guitar. The crowd of onlookers ebbed away, hands on their mouths as they watched the spectacle unfold. A beautiful young gypsy woman in a black dress with red accents seemingly blossomed from the sand, climbed the opposite end of the table, and began her dance. The flowing dress swam through the air tracing her fluid motions, her high-heeled shoes stamping in time with the clapping and shouting of her brothers. Beneath the brim of his hat, Hieronymus concentrated on his playing. This combination of music and dance was provocative, dangerously combustible. Everyone in the courtyard was transfixed by the moment, none more so than Dolores.

  Rodrigo rose and took his place beside Hieronymus. The crowd heard a voice emerge, faint at first as an echo coming from the far off mountains. The tremulous voice grew in strength and merged with the music of the guitar and the rhythm of stamping feet on dust. The voice was one of sorrow, one that at once seemed on the verge of tears yet as stout and resolute, indomitable. It was a voice of passion and anguish, love and despair. It resonated off the stone and drenched the bricks of the courtyard. Then words began to form.

  Of course, Rodrigo was only lip-synching.

  Had anyone not been entranced by the display, they might have noticed that his lips did not perfectly match the lyrics, and that in fact the voice emanated from beneath the guitarist’s broad-brimmed hat. Hieronymus knew hundreds of flamenco songs and, a student who had learned his lessons well, he chose to improvise, blending the traditional with the tragic. The song he sang was original, born before them all in that very moment.

  The song started in his belly and then rose, reverberating in the chasm that once housed his heart. He began with the history of the wandering people searching for a home, of a parentless boy born to a city divided, of brother murdering brother, and the suffering of a true love found and lost, never to be regained. Words fluttered from his mouth like a wounded bird, a meandering river of a tale telling of shattered souls struggling to piece together their lives in an uncertain future, where their meager hope for redemption lay in a forgiveness borne of love.

  The song ended with a thunderclap. The crowd was so stunned by the performance that no one noticed Rodrigo had missed his final cue. Hieronymus nudged him with his foot and Rodrigo, as if roused from a dream, stepped forward, brandished a cloth, and wiped away his face paint.

  “Sweet Dolores, it is I, Rodrigo Álvarez de Montefrio, and I have come to pledge my love before the finest people in the city,” he said, his voice shaking now as he approached the stage.

  “Your parents say I am unworthy, but love transcends petty politics. You know that our hearts are united. May we not join our houses and begin a family anew?”

  Hieronymus nodded in satisfaction at the recitation of the lines he had scripted but the others seemed unsure. The only sound to be heard was the twittering of birds on the breeze. Dolores’s father’s face looked waxy and rigid as his eyes darted back and forth in his skull. As for herself, she said nothing.

  Rodrigo’s voice broke as he whispered, “Lola, I beg you. Let us forgive each other’s wrongs. Take me back. Make us whole.”

  For a moment she gazed at him, stoic. Then her glacial veneer cracked and slid away, revealing a face Hieronymus could almost describe as warm. She pushed her way past her father and rushed down to embrace her lover. Their lips met, and the gathered crowd sighed in unison. Then came the applause, the cheers and a thousand flashes of light bulbs as the local reporters snapped pictures for their gossip columns.

  Rodrigo wiped away the caked makeup from Dolores’s tear-streaked face and shook every hand offered before looking to thank his companions, but he found only a wide-brimmed hat, a false beard, and an empty gray cape alone in the dirt. Hieronymus and his gypsy contingent had long since disappeared, as though borne away by the wind.

  Much later that night, under the cover of darkness, Hieronymus made not a sound as he slipped over the railing, his arms exhausted from climbing forty-seven floors. It took but a second to disarm the balcony’s alarm and neutralize the security systems installed on the sliding patio door. Behind him, the lights of Granada shimmered beautifully but he did not dwell on the view. He was at work.

  In the moonlight streaming through the window, Hieronymus could make out the shapes of two nude figures intertwined on the sheets, their bodies fused into one. The room’s musky blend of sweat and sex contrasted with the crisp night air wafting in behind him. Hieronymus took a moment to gaze at Rodrigo and Dolores as they slept, and he smiled. It was a genuine smile of one who has learned to recognize love in many forms, and respects it as the fragile, wondrous, dangerous thing that it is.

  Then he went about burgling the entire apartment.

  He stole their cash, their pricey perfumes, and carefully packed their rare artwork in towels and linens. He took rings, bracelets, brooches and watches. He smothered the mewling ocelot with tasseled pillows and twisted the thrush’s head until he heard its delicate springs snap and stuffed them both in a sack. He stripped the golden trees on the vanity of every diamond and jewel that hung from their branches, and then stole the trees as well, piling bag after bag against the balcony railing. With the apartment looted, he threw their keys over the ledge, cut their clothing into strips, jammed all the locks with broken picks and plugged their toilets.

  He drew out his camera and took dozens of pictures of the nude couple from the most indelicate angles and left the empty film canisters on the nightstand atop a stack of gossip papers, knowing his message would be clear. On the ceiling above the bed, with a tube of blood-red lipstick, he wrote SINCEREST OF THANKS FROM YOUR ONE-TIME FRIEND.

  Then, sensing that dawn was near, Hieronymus went to the vat on the bedside table and stole back his heart. The money from the stolen goods would be more than enough to bribe the best surgeon to fasten it back in place. As for the sizable remainder, he planned to round up every last homeless child in the city and provide them with as many clothes and as much food as possible. With patience and perseverance, he was convinced he could find the girl who had sold his name for a scrap of bread and beg her forgiveness for his vanity, lust and greed. And perhaps, with time, he could even convince her that he was a man worthy of her dead f
ather’s memory.

  At last, Hieronymus flung his bags of plunder over the rail, watching the glorious procession of billowing parachutes drifting toward the waiting hands of his friends below in the Albaicín. Then he fastened a chute securely onto his own back and stood on railing, pausing to drink in the majestic view. Then he dove headfirst over the ledge and Hieronymus Dismas, Grandmaster Thief of People’s Granada, was aloft over the city he so dearly loved.

  In Lieu of a Thank You

  Gwynne Garfinkle

  The man you killed taught me a lot about Lepidoptera. Butterflies have two sets of wings, the forewings and the hind-wings, all of them covered in minute scales – but you don’t want to hear about that.

  Of course I was afraid at first, Charles. I never said I wasn’t. Rocco cut quite a menacing figure with his hatchet profile and black hood. The party at Bertie’s had become tedious, so I’d left on my own when it was still twilight. Yes, I know you would have preferred that I not walk home unattended! Jimmy had offered to run me home in his Rolls, but it was such a lovely summer evening, the air caressing my skin. I suppose I was a bit tight – there’d been rather a lot of champagne at the party. I strolled aimlessly for a while, and I was loitering in front of a shop window, contemplating whether a midnight blue satin cloche with feathers might be rather nice for our honeymoon, when Rocco came up behind me and grasped my shoulder. I gave a jump, turned and let out a pathetic squeak at the sight of him. Then he jammed the cloth soaked in chloroform over my nose and mouth.

  I came to on a pallet on the stone floor, and Ernest was peering down at me. I took in his piercing gray eyes beneath wire-rimmed spectacles, his fine and lofty brow, his short pale hair that looked as if it had been touched by electricity. I became aware of a mechanical sound in the room, a purring and a whirring, and saw from the corner of my eye flashes of light in the already harshly lit room.