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Authors: David Barnett
Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon
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To Charlie and Alice,
may you always be the heroes of your stories
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When this novel's predecessor,
Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl,
was published in September 2013, I had no idea what sort of reception it would receive. In retrospect, I couldn't have hoped for a better welcome for Gideon, Rowena, Maria, Aloysius, and all the rest.
The reviews have been wonderful, both from the major newspapers and magazines and from the army of book bloggers who seem to have taken Gideon & Co. to their hearts and who have written such lovely words about the first book. And thanks must go to those readers who picked up the book and enjoyed itâas a writer, nothing gladdens the heart more than getting an e-mail, message, or tweet from a complete stranger to say they sat up all night reading your book.
I must thank what I've come to think of as my Tor family for all their hard work in bringing these books to lifeâit's my name on the front of this book but it wouldn't exist without the determination and support of my wonderful editor, Claire Eddy, Bess Cozby, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, publicist extraordinaire Leah Withers, Irene Gallo, and everyone else through whose hands
Gideon
has passed on the journey to publication. And Emma Barnes at Snowbooks, publishers of the UK editions of the Gideon Smith series, is a marvel and a dynamo.
A special mention must go to Grant Balfour for the exhaustive (and exhausting) lessons on American history. Together with Claire Eddy, Grant was invaluable for teaching this Brit the minutiae of what went down, what it all meant, and what I could get away with riding roughshod over. Anything that rings true is probably down to them; anything that seems ridiculous is most likely all my own work.
My agent, John Jarrold, is friend, confidant, arse-kicker, and all-around good egg, without whom none of this would be happening.
And, as ever, my ultimate thanks must go to my wife, Claire, for her unwavering support, love, and selfless willingness to step in and kick my arse when my agent couldn't quite reach.
Finally, thanks for reading this far. I hope you read the rest of the book, and enjoy it. You can find me on Twitter at @davidmbarnett or online at
www.davidbarnett.wordpress.com
.
David Barnett
West Yorkshire
2014
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CONTENTS
2. The Hero of the Effing Empire
4. A Visit from Mr. Walsingham
11. Damn Steamtown to a Hundred Hells
14. The Lord of the Star of the Dawn
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In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.
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â
W
ILLIAM
B
LAKE,
“London”
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1
T
HE
L
OST
W
ORLD
Charles Darwin stood motionless at the mouth of the cave, his serge trousers pooled in a ragged heap around his ankles, as a shrieking pteranodon wheeled and soared in the blue morning sky.
“Good God, man!” said Stanford Rubicon, pushing away the crudely stitched-together palm fronds he had been using as a blanket. “How long have you been standing there like that?”
Kneading the sleep from his eyes, Rubicon clambered over the loose stones to where Darwin stood by the ashes of last night's fire, taking a moment to glance out from the lip of the cave to the steaming jungle below. The sun had risen over the jagged claws of the mountains to the east; it was shaping up to be another beautiful day in hell. The pteranodon, drifting on the rising warmth, cawed at Rubicon and glided out of sight. Darwin's rheumy eyes swiveled in their sockets toward Rubicon, filled with pain and humiliation. He tried to speak but succeeded only in dribbling down his long beard.
“There, there, old chap, don't fret,” murmured Rubicon, pulling up Darwin's trousers without fuss or ceremony. “Soon have you mobile again.”
Using the makeshift shovel, little more than a piece of curved bark tied with twine to a short stick, Rubicon gathered up a few pieces of their dwindling coal supply. There was only enough for three days, perhaps four, and that was if they didn't use it on their cooking fire. Rubicon blanched at the thought of getting more; the only seam they had found near enough to the surface to be extractable was, unfortunately, only a hundred yards upwind of a tyrannosaur nest. He considered the few black rocks on the shovel, then tipped a third back onto the small pile. Darwin would just have to not exert himself today, while they considered their next move.
Arranged at Darwin's stomach was the unwieldy yet vital furnace that kept him mobile andâthough Rubicon was still mystified at the science behind itâalive. Beneath the aged botanist's torn shirt, now more gray than white through lack of starch and washing, copper pipes and iron pistons snaked over his body in a dull metal matrix, bulky with pistons and shunts at his major joints. Darwin must have gotten up to relieve himself in the middle of the night, and the amazing yet grotesque external skeleton that ensured his longevity must have seized up, as it was doing more and more frequently in the past month. Arranging the meager lumps of coal on a bed of kindling and pages torn from the books they had managed to rescue from the wreck that had stranded them there six months ago, Rubicon struck a match and, when he was sure the kindling was catching, shut the little metal door to the furnace. Then he cast around for the oilcan and applied a few drops to the joints of the skeleton, still unable to stop himself from blanching as he saw the pipes that were sunk into the flesh at Darwin's chest and at the base of his neck. The skeleton was the work of the eminent scientist Hermann Einstein, and it not only allowed the old man to move, albeit with a hissing, clanking, jerking motion, but also pumped his heart and did God knew what to his brain. Sometimes Rubicon wondered if he would ever understand the modern world, but looking out into the lush green jungle below, he wished beyond measure that he could see London again, its soaring spires, scientific mysteries, technological puzzles, and all.
As the furnace fired the tiny engines that powered the cage encasing Darwin's emaciated body, the old botanist creaked into life, the metal jaw that was stitched to the bone beneath his bearded chin yawning wide. He flexed his ropelike muscles with an exhalation of steam from his joints and turned his milky eyes on Rubicon.
“Stanford,” he said softly. “I fear I cannot endure this purgatory another day.”
Rubicon patted him on the shoulder, the ridges of pipes and tubes warm now beneath his hand. He looked out across the jungle. “Not long now, Charles,” he said, though without conviction. “Help will come.”
F
ROM THE JOURNAL OF
C
HARLES
D
ARWIN,
A
UGUST ??, 1890
It is six months or thereabouts since the
HMS Beagle II
suffered its most woeful fate on the jagged rocks that lurk in the foaming seas around this lost world. Six months we have been stranded here, hidden from the outside world, barely surviving on our wits and hoping against hope to see the rescue mission that Professor Rubicon most wholeheartedly believes will arrive any day.
I confess that I do not share Rubicon's faith in the power of the Empire to effect such a rescue. We are many thousands of miles from land, in uncharted waters, and within the sphere of influence of the Japanese. We had to steal here in secrecy, avoiding the shipping lanes and telling no one of our progress or destination. It took Rubicon half a lifetime to find his lost world, and now he believes that Britain will simply chance upon it? For all his bluster and rugged enthusiasm, I fear that Rubicon is merely humoring me. He knows that my survival for so long is a miracle in itself, and he wishes merely to jolly me along when he knows full well that we shall both die in this tropical nightmare. In idle momentsâand is there any other kind in this place?âI wonder how I shall meet my inevitable death. What creature, I wonder, shall end my life? Will it be the snapping jaws of the tyrannosaurs? The horns of a triceratops? A brace of predatory velociraptors? It would be a fitting end for Charles Darwin, my detractors might say. Natural selection? Evolution? Mammals supplanting the dinosaurs? The old fool was eaten by that which he claimed gave way for the ascent of man!