The Mammoth Book of Steampunk (7 page)

“A golden egg?” he asked. “A creation of yours?” His eyes narrowed. “Something Brennan was working on?” He took a step forward and I took one back, a strange and silent dance around the casket.

“I think you need to review the privacy laws, Mr Plenty.” My voice sounded much more steady than I felt. I shoved the heart into my pocket, aware of little bits of casket lid sprinkling out of it as I did so.

“An orphan invention?” Plenty asked. He stepped forward again, and I stepped back yet again, now on the far side of the casket. J. J. rested between me and Mr Plenty, a silent shield. The hatch lay beyond Plenty.

I found Plenty’s question curious, that he should liken the heart to a child. J. J. and I had been cautious lovers, neither one of us wanting to risk a pregnancy. Physicians could not tell us if a child born to us would be J. J.’s size or my own, but they could tell me that carrying a normal-sized child would likely place me in great peril. J. J. refused to risk me that way – even if he later parachuted with me out of Neil Lundwood’s zeppelin over Mount Kilimanjaro. “I’m holding your hand either way, Murrie,” he said, “but won’t let you risk that kind of death.” For J. J. Brennan, there was a good death and a bad death. Killed while leaping from a zeppelin was acceptable. Dying in a hospital, of all places one might choose, was frowned upon.

Still, I knew the shadow in his eye, for I saw it within my own each morning as I dressed. The longing for a child, for an heir to leave his fortunes to and the world besides. It was how I first came upon the mention of Doctor Varley. A small note in a medical journal I picked up at Tock’s Books, no more than three lines. A brief mention of reconfiguring the human body to withstand the Increasing Perils of the World in Which We Lived.

At the time, I had wondered. How might one be reconfigured? What might be possible? J. J. wondered, too.

Doctor Varley thought the idea a fascinating one. Might he reconfigure me into a normal-sized woman? But J. J. had grown ill before we could consider such things in depth, and Varley’s attentions turned toward a heart instead, that he might at least prolong J. J.’s life. The prototype was shown at the World’s Fair some years prior; the public gaped, the outcry was tremendous. Most did not want to hear of the frailty of human flesh.

“None of your concern,” I told Plenty, and moved again as he did. Around the foot of the casket now as Plenty rounded the head.

“An invention of Brennan’s that you mean to claim as your own?”

My eyes narrowed at the very idea. “You dare—”

But whatever insult I might have hurled at the reporter was cut short.
Icebreaker
, for lack of a better word, stopped. The waters around us seemed suddenly solid, and Mr Plenty and I were flung bodily to the floor. J. J.’s casket would have followed and landed atop us, but for Plenty’s walking stick coming up to jab the box in its side and keep it barely balanced. I stared at the casket in horror, paying little mind to the ache in my shoulder and hip as I scrambled back to my feet, to plant both hands against the casket and attempt to push it back onto the crates. Plenty’s efforts were met with more success than my own.

For a moment, all was quiet and then
Icebreaker
shuddered. I could then hear noise from above and outside both. Strange cracking sounds and a new vibration that made the floor feel like jelly under my feet.

“Another time then, Mrs Brennan,” Plenty murmured, and shuffled himself out of the room, vanishing down the length of the corridor with only the tap-tap-tap of his walking stick sounding in his wake.

Another time. He would not be far. My fingers tightened against the casket and I bent to press my lips against the pine.

“Missus.”

Cook was there then, and I simply looked at him, too shocked and confused to do much else. Cook nodded and moved forward, finding the necessary lines to secure the casket to the wall.

“What’s happening up there?” My voice was not at all steady, nor were my hands as they latched onto a line and helped tug it firm.

“Come see,” Cook said, and nodded me toward the hatch. “Captain woulda warned folk, but it came up on us quicker than he thought.”

Coats, goggles and gloves were retrieved before we reached the final hatch, and we stepped through bundled up. Breath fogged in the bright air. Though it was well past seven in the evening, daylight still reigned, and would so long as we were down here. Summer tipped the world in such a way, J. J. had told me, that the sun never set. The light was disconcerting, bouncing off the icebergs as it did, making them light and shadowed by turns.

As Cook and I came up, the deck was sliced with long shadows from that towering ice, while around us the sea seemed to have vanished. Swallowed by ice. Everywhere I looked, there was only ice. Cook tugged me toward the rail where Mr Plenty already lingered, and pointed.

Icebreaker
’s prow was doing its hard work. The grand metal dagger bit into the sea ice, shattering it and allowing the ship to pass through.
Icebreaker
groaned under the strain, yet still seemed to move without complication through the cleaved ice. I could see the angel and her tattered wings, crusted with ice that gleamed in the bright-but-cold sunlight. Could see, too, the cogs of her heart, turning.

If this were not enough wholly to capture my attention, the dark figures on the unbroken ice field ahead were. I squinted against the bright sun, but when that same sunlight caught one of the figures and illuminated the scarlet crest atop its head, my eyes flew wide open.

There were dozens of them and the ice beneath their massive clawed feet was bright with blood. Even now, some penguins tried to escape the slaughter, but the terrible lizards were faster than anything I’d seen before. One massive head bent to the ice, snatched a round penguin in its sharp jaws and devoured it the way Conor had his squid. Bite, bite, bite.

And then, they saw us. Perhaps they felt the vibration
Icebreaker
made as she churned through the ice. Perhaps they heard the increasing growl of the engine as more power was applied and steam bellowed into the cold, bright air. The lizards looked up, heads snapping around to stare at
Icebreaker
.

It seemed they waited a heartbeat and then surged. Cook and Plenty took a step backward with me and as the lizards streaked across the frozen landscape, my only thought was of Conor. Where was the boy?

“Captain!”

I screamed for Brown, even though he was nowhere to be seen, either. As the lizards scrambled ever closer,
Icebreaker
rammed something she could not break. I heard hollered curses rising for a moment above the whine of the straining engines, and then there was only the awful sound of the engines, trying to press the ship forward though she could not be budged.

Closer now, I could hear the lizards hissing and shrieking. To each other? Communication? J. J. would marvel, but the sounds sent more than a shiver through me, and I moved away, toward the starboard rail. I could
hear
their curled claws gaining purchase on the ice, like little picks – how swift they were, agile over the ice, bodies low and sleek, necks stretched out, nearly like birds in low flight!

The lizards bounded over the ship rails. Their claws clattered against the deck and they at last faltered in their approach, unfamiliar with metal decking. I feared Cook and Plenty dead, for the beasts did not cease despite their faulty footing. They charged on. Cook pulled Plenty toward the rail, where they might press themselves and avoid the sudden invasion. The lizards leapt over them, and kept on. I turned, meaning to run the rest of the distance to the starboard rail, but that’s when
Icebreaker
’s own heart gave out. The straining engines snapped and exploded.

J. J. was laughing, I was sure of it. Whether he looked down on us from Heaven Above, or up from Hell’s deepest crevasse, laughter was reddening his cheeks and making his belly tremble. Even with that laughter in mind, I cried out as the ship buckled and the sun-bright evening air suddenly became my home. Warm blood flecked my cheeks, splattered my coat, the stench of burning wool and hair clogged my nose, and then I knew only the cool air rushing past me, until the ground reached up to yank me back down.

For a long while I couldn’t breathe. I rolled onto my bruised side and at last drew in a shaking breath as I found myself looking into Captain Brown’s sightless eyes. They were hazel, those eyes, now lashed with blood. I reached a hand out to close them, my own fingers covered in blood and God knew what else. From behind Captain Brown, a shadow descended and an immense maw closed over his head and shoulder to rip him away from my fingertips.

“Now’s the time to go, Murrie.”

I heard J. J.’s voice as clear as day, though my ears were ringing from the explosion. I pushed myself up off the ice and looked around, watching in disbelief as two of the lizards fought over Brown’s body. One glance behind me showed it was clear of any living lizards – body and ship parts strewed the ice, slick with blood and other fluids. I felt the bile rise in my throat and forced myself to move forward.

It was then I realized the hem of my coat was in tatters. That my woolen trousers were the same, falling apart in bits of sooty ash as I stumbled across the field of debris. I clutched the ruined wool to me, but then – ah, God! The pockets of my trousers were likewise gone, and with them, J. J.’s heart.

My boot slipped in a patch of blood, and I fell hard, gloved hands coming up at the last moment to save at least my face. The breath went out of me again and I looked up with a choked sob at the scene around me. Dead lizards, dead humans – living lizards fighting over the remains of people I’d stood with only moments before! – and the ruin of
Icebreaker
sinking into the icy waters, taking J. J.’s body with it. The metal angel reached up, but failed to grab anything that might save the vessel. I cried out at the utter injustice of it, but it was a small sound, lost amid the snarls of the beasts nearby.

“Miss M-Muriel!”

He must’ve shouted my name a few times; his little throat seemed strained by it when I finally heard him and turned to look. Conor Westerfield stood a ways off, torch burning in one hand, a long shard of metal held in the other. Half his hair was gone, burned clean to the scalp, and his left cheek trickled blood.

Now’s the time to go, Murrie. J. J. said so. I nodded to Conor, but my head seemed heavy. Throbbing and full of tears. I pushed up from the ice and stood, and that’s when we heard the screaming. It was loud, coming to me as though my ears weren’t at all damaged from the explosion. Over and over, the same sound echoed against the ice and strangely, sent the quarreling lizards scattering.

It was Plenty. When my vision cleared of tears, I saw him approaching from the wreck of the ship, carrying what looked like Captain Brown’s phonograph. His own trousers were in scraps, so too was his coat. Through the gaps in the fabric, I could see something gleaming. Something metallic. Covered in blood and soot, he staggered toward us, turning the handle on the phonograph. Whatever it was playing, it was not the machine’s original song. It was a shriek now, grating metal magnified and tossed out onto the icy plain.

In silence, we three gathered what we could from the debris around us, wrapping ourselves in what fabric we could find so that we would not perish from the cold. I found a compass, its case cracked, but it still worked, the needle settling to tell me I was pointed west. I held the compass, much as I had J. J.’s heart, and searched on, finding sodden pages from Mr Herbert’s illustration book, a small battered stove and a sextant.

Icebreaker
sank as we searched. The ruined steamship vanished beneath the ice she’d broken with a gurgle and a groan; slowly, the fragments of ice closed over the site, looking like puzzle pieces atop a very blue table. I crouched for a long time at the edge of the ice, as if I could will the ship back to the surface. But J. J.’s body, like his heart, was now out of my reach. As much as I looked that evening, there was no sign of that clockwork heart. I think I was too numb to cry.

Plenty and I took turns that night, sitting watch while Conor slept. Well away from the broken edge of ice, we made camp with a small fire fueled by debris, and kept watch for any more lizards. Only once did one get close to pick through the debris. Plenty scared it away with another turn of the phonograph crank.

Plenty’s notebook was quite the ruin. He sat it on the ice between us at one point, amid the other collected items. Small cases of stove fuel, a crooked pan, a small pack and within it, oddly, one shoe. It was Plenty who interested me more than those items though, Plenty with his exposed mechanical bits.

We shared part of a lizard leg, roasted in the campfire, while Plenty’s own injured leg stretched alongside. The mock-skin had been burned or torn, exposing a network of metal beneath. Long streams of blood-flecked copper and gold ran from his knee to ankle, the entire calf seeming clockwork. His knee, too, was made of gears and cogs; the tooth of one cog poked through the covering of mock-skin.

His eyes, though, when he looked at me, were all human. Not clockwork. We watched each other a long time, and though we were both wearing goggles, one lens on each cracked, it seemed we saw each other for the first time there. He was not a reporter, I was not the story he pursued. We simply were. Plenty drew his coat around him, and gnawed on the lizard meat and eventually the bright bone he exposed.

“When I was younger,” he said around a mouthful, “I was ill.” This revelation seemed to cause him distress, though he seemed resigned to it, and to explaining if only somewhat. “My leg …” He exhaled and tossed the bone into the fire where it sparked. “Wasted away. The doctors could do little. And then, Doctor Varley contacted me. He had an idea, a plan to put my leg back together.”

I blinked. “Varley,” I said quietly. My throat tightened. Surely Plenty had known then, what the “golden egg” was. I leaned forward, dipping a cup into the ice we had melted in Cook’s fry pan to drink.

“And he did.” He looked back at me, his gaze even. “Put me back together.” He laughed now, a hoarse sound that made him seem more human to me than he had at any time before in this journey. “Maybe he will once more.”