Dead Man’s Hand (20 page)

“We know you’ve got him, Bill!”

I nodded at the man who had spoken. “Go back to your bed, Parker. All of you.”

Normally Parker Quail dressed like an East Coast businessman, with his pinstriped
suit and bowler hat—the very model of civic respectability. Tonight, dragged from
his slumbers by news of the vandalism wrought on his horseless carriage, he had slipped
a heavy coat on over a striped nightgown and jammed his trouserless legs into a pair
of boots. His hair was uncombed and greasy.

I didn’t much care for Quail—never had. He knew it, too. He’d made his money through
every form of skullduggery and intimidation known to man. His men were thugs, only
now they were well-dressed thugs with friends in the right places.

“Word is your prisoner’s a friend,” Quail said. “Folk saw him drinking before he started
off on his wrecking spree. Overheard him boasting about being Legion. Now who else
do we know who fought in the Legion?”

I shrugged, still keeping my hand on my holster. “Friend or no friend, he’ll get the
same treatment everyone gets.”

Quail spat into the mud. “What’s to say he won’t be gone by sun-up, spirited away
so he won’t have to face justice?”

“My word as marshal.”

“Maybe your word isn’t worth as much as you think. McCreedy made a pretty mess of
my
auto-mobile
.” I had never heard that expression and it did not sound as if it came naturally
to Quail, more that he was trying it on for size, like a new style of hat.

“It’s just a machine, Parker. They’ll make you a new one. Now get back home!”

“Give us McCreedy, we’ll give it some consideration!” Quail said.

I glanced at Benedict. Benedict nodded and let off the shotgun, aiming it into the
sky. Now none of these men were strangers to gunfire, or easily impressed. But when
a lawman lets off a powerful firearm like that, a lawman that you know has the right
and authority to employ that weapon within the city limits, it carries a certain conviction.
Quail’s mob, yellow-bellies to a man, began to disperse.

“This ain’t over!” Quail called back to me, smearing a hand through his hair.

“Is that a threat, Mister Quail?” I relieved Benedict of the shotgun, made a point
of lowering it so that the barrel wasn’t exactly aimed at Quail and wasn’t exactly
not
aimed at him either. “Think it over,” I said quietly.

I hoped that was the end of it, but experience told me it probably wasn’t. Quail and
his men would retire to their saloon and drink until their rage and thirst for retribution
overcame what little good sense they possessed. It was a pattern Benedict and I were
already more than familiar with.

I closed the door, told Benedict not to bother racking the shotgun for now.

“Feeling we’ve got a long night ahead of us.” I examined the cold contents of my tin
mug. “You want to set some fresh coffee on, deputy?”

Abel McCreedy was still in his chair. “Heard you give ’em both barrels, son,” he said,
nodding appreciatively at Benedict, as the younger man went to light the stove.

“I doubt it made much difference,” I answered. “You really could have picked someone
else to make an enemy of, Abel.”

“Told you, it wasn’t nothin’ to do with Parker Quail.”

“Right,” I said, trying to pick up the thread of what we’d been discussing. The woman
in the huckster’s tent, that was it. “So tell me about the lady without a face,” I
said, thinking it would pass the time to daybreak, if nothing else.

Benedict looked over his shoulder. “Lady without a face?”

“Never you mind,” I growled.

Abel waited until I gave a nod for him to continue. “She reached up and pulled it
away, like it was a paper mask. Only it wasn’t no paper. There was no join there,
no line around her face, and yet it just came away in one piece. Mouth, nose, eyes—and
the worst part of it was, the mouth and eyes were still movin’ even as she took her
face off, holdin’ it in her fingers all dainty and lady-like, like this was the proper
thing, like takin’ off your hat in church.”

“And what was under the mask?”

“Nothin’. That was the worst, I think. I was lookin’ down a kind of tunnel, the same
shape as her face. Went on and on, like a rifle barrel, stretchin’ too far into the
distance. It should have come out the back of her head, but it didn’t! And there were
things around the walls of this barrel, all movin’ and tickin’ like gears and levers…
but the way they was doin’ what they was doin’, I could only look at them for a second
before my eyes started hurtin’. I wanted to look away. Lord knows I tried. But my
head wouldn’t move. Even my eyes wouldn’t move! God have mercy, she put her face back
on. Makes a squelch like a boot in mud. Just pushed it back into place, and there’s
no line, no gap, where it joined back up. And she says: ‘I find it helps to get to
the point, Mister McCreedy.’”

“She knew your name?”

“I don’t know how. Then she says: ‘We have been taking an uncommon interest in each
other. I understand your concern for me.’” Abel spoke these words slowly and clearly,
like he was making a special effort. “‘But I must warn you that the concern should
be for your own well-being. You are meddling in forces beyond your narrow comprehension.’
Then she allows me to speak. I feel as if she’s reached into my head and pulled a
lever, like in the cab of a locomotive. I say: ‘Who are you?’ And she answers: ‘
What
are you would be more appropriate, sir. I am a
machine intelligence
, Mister McCreedy. A mechanical woman. Think of me as a kind of clockwork automaton,
if that helps you.’”

I smiled. Like it or not, he was painting a strange picture in my mind. “Did it?”

“What do you think? She had me doubting my sanity, Bill. Even now, I know how this
has to sound. But ask yourself: does a mad man ever ’fess up to doubting his own sanity?”

“Not in my limited experience.”

Benedict came over with three tin mugs of coffee, done the way we usually took it:
black as night and strong as a mule’s kick. “Seems quieter out there now,” he said,
“but reckon I’ll keep a watch on things just in case.”

“Good idea,” I said, accepting my mug and offering the second to Abel.

Benedict went out the door, not taking the shotgun this time, just his holstered revolver
and a mug of coffee. I didn’t doubt that we’d have more trouble from Parker Quail
before sun-up, but an armed and alert deputy is a fair deterrent for most kinds.

“Miss Steel told me she was here to put things right,” Abel said. “‘The rule of law
is being broken,’” she said, ‘and I have come to enforce it. Unfortunately I travel
alone, and my resources are extremely limited.’”

“Did you ask her where she came from?”

Abel let out a little laugh. “She told me she came from the Moon.”

“And you believed her?”

He shifted. “Not exactly. Thing is, she wasn’t made of no clockwork, either. Something
else, something stranger.” He took a cautious sip from his coffee. “Reckon she was
sugarin’ the pill for me, Bill.”

“So the truth was something
stranger
than her coming from the Moon?”

“Now you put it like that…”

“Guess it’s no madder than a woman who can take her face off and calls herself a
machine intelligence
. This ‘rule of law’ she came to enforce. What in blazes did it have to do with the
wrecks?”

“That’s where it gets weirder. She said there were others like her, other
machine intelligences
, only these other ones had come down from the Moon or wherever, to do something bad,
something that was against their law. Like gamblin’ or whorin’ is against ours. And
this woman… thing… this Miss Dolores C. Steel… was a kind of agent, like a Pinkerton,
operatin’ for her government, tryin’ to track these outlaws down, only she was on
her own and she needed to disguise herself up so she could walk around and sneak up
on them, because they were tricked out like she was, made to look like ord’nary men
and women.”

“She was happy to tell you all this?”

“Said it didn’t matter to her one way or the other whether I believed a dang word
of it. Just that it was better for me if I kept out of things. She said she didn’t
want people like me gettin’ hurt because of
their
differences.”

“And these differences… what these clockwork Moon people were falling out over… they
somehow centered on train wrecks?”

“Machines, Bill—like I said right there at the start. According to Dolores C. Steel
that’s all there is out there. Just machines. Clockwork folk like Miss Steel herself.
Machine intelligences. Folks like you and me, made of flesh and blood, we’re a creek
that don’t run nowhere. She said it’s like that on all the planets, wherever you go.
Life starts out all creepy-crawly, with birds and bees and flowers, and monkeys and
rattlesnakes and men and women. Then folks get lazy and start fashionin’ themselves
all kinds of tools and accouterments—fancy ploughs and waterwheels, then steam hammers
and riverboats, then locomotives and telegraphs and horseless carriages. Get so lazy
they can’t even
walk
to see a spectacle, so they settle for lookin’ at photographs and Mister Edison’s
vitascope instead. And it don’t stop with horseless carriages, neither. Miss Steel
says that’s just the start of things—the first word on the first page! Before long
there are flyin’ machines and talkin’ machines and machines makin’ more machines!
And once that happens, it’s like setting the throttle on a steam locomotive, and jumpin’
off while she’s still movin’! You can’t stop it! Can’t slow it down! It’s
techno-logical progress
, Bill. Starts off seemin’ like a good thing, but it ends with machines takin’ over.
Ain’t room for two kinds of folk, and the clockwork kind always win. Kill us, squeeze
us out, just plain outlive us—don’t matter in the long run.”

“You still haven’t got to the wrecking.”

“That’s easy—or at least Miss Steel made it seem that way. She says there are good
machines and bad machines out there. The bad ones, they’re always lookin’ out for
a world like ours. Got to come at the right time. We’re like an apple that’s just
turnin’ red and juicy—ripe for picking. They see our machines and see what they used
to be—all steam and pistons and oil and smoke. To them it’s like animals, or little
children.”

“I still don’t…”

“Bill, it’s like this. There are men who’ll pay to see bears and dogs fight each other
to the death. Men who’ll pay to see terrible things done to other people, too—pay
to see people do things to people, if it comes to that. All kinds of violence and
depravity, things that’ll make any God-fearing soul sick to the pit of their stomach,
there’s someone out there who’ll
pay
for it. Well, it’s no different for the machines. But they have their own laws and
civilization, too. And places where the law don’t stick. Like here.”

“So the wrecks… that’s like cockfighting, or bear-baiting, to these people?”

“Near as Miss Steel could make me understand it. And she said that violence being
done by one machine to another was the
worst thing
she could imagine, and that it was important to track down the machine intelligences
who were behind all this, yankin’ our chains to keep the wrecks happenin’, because
if she didn’t, they’d only go on to worse things.”

“Worse things,” I repeated.

“It’s like a disease. Sign of somethin’ not right in their heads. Miss Steel’s here
to catch ’em, take ’em back home. Back to their own justice.”

“But our machines… they’re just metal and rivets and bolts. They move because of steam
and fire and men pulling levers. There’s no mind inside of them.”

“I asked Miss Steel that. She said I was lookin’ at things from a ‘biological perspective.’
To them, there ain’t no line in the dirt twix’ one machine and another. A woman that
talks and takes off her face, a telegraph machine, a Colt revolver, an iron bar, it’s
all just a question of degrees. They don’t see themselves as standin’ apart from all
the other sorts of machines. They’re all kinfolk. And when they see a holy abomination
bein’ done to one of their kind, it makes ’em full of righteous indignation!”

That made no sense to me, that a machine could see all other machines as being kin,
but then I thought back to the wrecking of the horseless carriage, how it had looked
pathetic to me, like a dog being beaten.

“Then I truly don’t understand, Abel. She told you all this, and yet I still found
you smashing up Parker Quail’s machine?”

“She made me
believe
it, Bill, but that don’t mean I had to like any of it. I believe in the Devil—don’t
mean I dance to his tune, neither. Miss Steel told me that the machines will always
triumph, sooner or later. Gonna happen here, too—and men with their horseless carriages,
they’re only hurryin’ it on!”

“So you wrecked Quail’s carriage to stop the machines taking over?”

“Knew it wouldn’t make no difference, Bill, but if everyone did the same thing, then
maybe it would… or least ways slow it down some. Why’d we have to stampede into this?
Ain’t the future coming fast enough as it is, without giddyin’ it along like the Pony
Express?”

I thought about the changes I’d seen, just since the war between the States. You owned
the world when you were a young man, felt it like it was fashioned to fit your hands.
You could do anything with it you wanted to. But the world kept changing, and sooner
or later there came a day when it didn’t feel like you were the one the world was
interested in anymore.

“That’s just old age talking, Abel.”

“Maybe it is. I’ll tell you this, though, Bill. Whatever you think of me, I didn’t
imagine Miss Dolores C. Steel. I was talkin’ to her plain as I’m talkin’ to you now.
Told you that was ten long years ago. Ain’t been a day since then when I haven’t ruminated
on her words. She put things in my head, made it hard for me to feel at home around
decent folk. Won’t say I didn’t seek solace in the bottle, either. But even liquor
couldn’t wash away what she’d made me believe. I didn’t mean no harm by Parker Quail.
But when I saw that horseless carriage, something in me snapped. I had to do my part,
Bill. I had to slow things down.”