The Mammoth Book of Steampunk (71 page)

They had discovered a coffin. The giant glass structure rested in the wall as if embedded in it, like amber in rock. Inside a shape was visible, strange and frightening. They shone their light into the coffin and a face stared at them, and Chancer growled again and swore: it was the same face they had seen in the water, but now it was still, and as unmoving as stone.

Then Chancer touched the coffin, and the darkness exploded into a brilliance of light.

The cavern filled with light; Chancer and Mot shrunk back, and as they did the side of the coffin began to open, and the eyes inside came alive.

The light was like a web suffusing the rock, a net cast over the darkness. Ethereal sounds, a faint, strange music, filled the air. The creature in the coffin rose and stood on two legs, its eyes on the adventurers.

Words came out of its mouth, but they were incomprehensible to Mot and Chancer. As they watched, the lights dimmed and the monster in the glass remained in the centre of an evolving web of light rays, haloed and silent.

The web of lights shifted and changed; it seemed to them to resemble a vast circular shape beyond which was a giant ocean. It was as if they were somehow caught inside a representation in light and shade of their world, and where the monster stood was the centre. The web of light ebbed and pulsed, marking mountain ranges, lakes, shores, tundra, deserts, veldt, forests, caves. At the heart of it all stood the monster, two-eyed, two-legged, tall and pale. Its eyes were the colour of the sea at dusk.

Words came to them again, heard in the mind; the monster’s lips did not move.

A dog. And a spider? It sounded amused. What strange company to be awakened to.

What … what are you? Chancer demanded, made bold by despair.

The voice came to him, soft and caressing like a spider’s silk.

You must know what you were looking for, it observed. To have come all this way, here, to the secret heart of the world … what treasure were you seeking, that you seem so at a loss?

Human, Mot whispered. And – Human, the voice in his head agreed. It sounded regretful.

The web of light shifted again, and in its dancing the world faded and faces appeared: there were cats there, their faces and bodies changing from one cycle to the next; there were dogs, likewise changing, a fluid movement through immeasurable time; there were spiders, a multitude of differences, divers and climbers, rock-dwellers and tree-dwellers, large and small; there were Avians there, gliding through air and roosting in vast Nests at the tops of trees. Chancer growled as the faces of other creatures appeared; those known as the Green Menace, the creatures of the swamp unseen for centuries; that strange, alien being called the Forgotten Sea, that moved like a drop of molten silver atop the Great Ocean; and others, stranger still, some familiar but many more that neither he nor Mot had ever seen.

You thought I was the treasure, the voice said, and there was mute sadness in it. But I am only the guardian of a treasure, and one that you already possess.

The light shifted, faded. In the silence the sudden sound of marching startled them. As they turned, the battalion of armoured cats streamed into the cavern until they threatened to fill it and formed into a web of their own, with Chancer and Mot in its centre.

Go, whispered the voice. The creature seemed to abate, to lose its animation. It sat back into the coffin and the glass began to close over it without noise.

Go, children. There are treasures enough, and time …

The light withered and was gone. The cats had cleared a space to the entrance of the cavern.

Mot and Chancer looked at each other, two eyes regarding right.

They left the cavern in silence, and their thoughts were their own.

This is the story of Chancer and Mot, and of the treasure they discovered. They traversed the path they had come, the cats following them at a distance, and on the fourth day they emerged into light.

The sun shone over the lake. On the water, bobbing gently, was Chancer’s airship.

They took to the air that day, and as they flew over the lake Mot wove lines for them, and they fished in the light of the moonlets, and built a fire, and talked. Their subsequent journeys are a matter for other stories, and those are the stories that everyone knows: how they crossed the One Continent from one end to the other and how they went on, beyond the Great Ocean. There are stories that say they found the Forgotten Sea and dwelt for a time in the Isle of Wraiths; that they met and fought with the Frog Folk, the Green Menace of the swamplands; that they flew with the Avians on their inexplicable journeys across the world, and that they lived for a time in the Pole, a story made all the more fanciful by what it is said they found there.

They had discovered a treasure at the heart of the world and every day they spent it, in their exhilaration and in their joy at the world and their being alive in it.

This is the story of Chancer and Mot. And this is the ballad of the last human.

“Steampunk: Looking to the Future Through the Lens of the Past” © 2012 by Ekaterina Sedia. Original to this volume.

“Fixing Hanover” © 2008 by Jeff VanderMeer. Originally appeared in
Extraordinary Engines.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Steam Dancer (1896)” © 2007 by Caitlín R. Kiernan. Originally appeared in
Sirenia Digest.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Icebreaker” © 2012 by E. Catherine Tobler. Original to this volume.

“Tom Edison and His Amazing Telegraphic Harpoon” © 2008 by Joseph E. Lake Jr. Originally appeared in
Weird Tales.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Zeppelin Conductors’ Society Annual Gentlemen’s Ball” © 2010 by Genevieve Valentine. Originally appeared in
Lightspeed Magazine.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Clockwork Fairies” © 2010 by Cat Rambo. Originally appeared in
Tor.com. Reprinted by permission of the author
.

“The Mechanical Aviary of Emperor Jala-ud-din Muhammad Akbar” © 2009 by Shweta Narayan. Originally appeared in
Shimmer.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Prayers of Forges and Furnaces” © 2012 by Aliette de Bodard. Original to this volume.

“The Effluent Engine” © 2011 by N. K. Jemisin. Originally appeared in
Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Clockwork Goat and the Smokestack Magi” © 2009 by Peter M. Ball. Originally appeared in
Shimmer.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Armature of Flight” © 2010 by Sharon Mock. Originally appeared in
Fantasy Magazine.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Anachronist’s Cookbook” © 2009 by Catherynne M. Valente. Originally appeared in
Steampunk Tales
. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Numismatics in the Reigns of Naranh and Viu” © 2012 by Alex Dally MacFarlane. Original to this volume.

“Zeppelin City” © 2009 by Eileen Gunn & Michael Swanwick. Originally appeared in
Tor.com.
Reprinted by permission of the authors.

“The People’s Machine” © 2008 by Tobias S. Buckell. Originally appeared in
Sideways in Crime.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Hands That Feed” © 2011 by Matthew Kressel. Originally appeared in
Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Machine Maid” © 2008 by Margo Lanagan. Originally appeared in
Extraordinary Engines.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“To Follow the Waves” © 2011 by Amal El-Mohtar. Originally appeared in
Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Clockmaker’s Requiem” © 2007 by Barth Anderson. Originally appeared in
Clarkesworld Magazine.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Dr Lash Remembers” © 2010 by Jeffrey Ford. Originally appeared in
Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Lady Witherspoon’s Solution” © 2008 by James Morrow. Originally appeared in
Extraordinary Engines.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Reluctance” © 2010 by Cherie Priest. Originally appeared in
The Living Dead 2.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“A Serpent in the Gears” © 2010 by Margaret Ronald. Originally appeared in
Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Celebrated Carousel of the Margravine of Blois” © 2011 by Megan Arkenberg. Originally appeared in
Fantasy Magazine.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Biographical Notes to ‘A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-Planes’ by Benjamin Rosenbaum” © 2004 by Benjamin Rosenbaum. Originally appeared in
All Star Stories.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Clockwork Chickadee” © 2008 by Mary Robinette Kowal. Originally appeared in
Clarkesworld Magazine.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Cinderella Suicide” © 2006 by Samantha Henderson. Originally appeared in
Strange Horizons.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Arbeitskraft” © 2012 by Nick Mamatas. Original to this volume.

“To Seek Her Fortune” © 2010 by Nicole Kornher-Stace. Originally appeared in
Clockwork Phoenix 3.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Ballad of the Last Human” © 2012 by Lavie Tidhar. Original to this volume.

Ekaterina Sedia
resides in the Pinelands of New Jersey. Her critically acclaimed novels,
The Secret History of Moscow
,
The Alchemy of Stone
and
The House of Discarded Dreams
were published by Prime Books. Her next one,
Heart of Iron
, was published in 2011. Her short stories have sold to
Analog
,
Baen’s Universe
,
Subterranean
and
Clarkesworld
, as well as numerous anthologies, including
Haunted Legends
and
Magic in the Mirrorstone.
She is also the editor of
Paper Cities
(World Fantasy Award winner),
Running with the Pack
,
Bewere the Night
and
Bloody Fabulous
(forthcoming). Visit her at
EkaterinaSedia.com
.

Jeff VanderMeer
’s books have made the year’s best lists of
Publishers Weekly
,
LA Weekly
, Amazon, the
San Francisco Chronicle
, and many more, and he has won two World Fantasy Awards, an NEA-funded Florida Individual Writers’ Fellowship and Travel Grant, and, most recently, the Le Cafard Cosmique Award in France and the Tähtifantasia Award in Finland. He has also been a finalist, as writer or editor, for the Hugo Award, Bram Stoker Award, IHG Award, Philip K. Dick Award, Shirley Jackson Award and many others. He is the author of over 300 stories, and his short fiction has appeared recently in
Conjunctions
,
Black Clock
,
Tor.com
and
Songs of the Dying Earth
, among several other original and year’s best anthologies, and
Library of America’s American Fantastic Tales
, edited by Peter Straub.

Caitlín R. Kiernan
is the award-winning author of nine novels, including
Silk
,
Threshold
,
Low Red Moon
,
Murder of Angels
,
Daughter of Hounds
and, most recently,
The Red Tree.
She is a prolific short-fiction writer, and her stories have been collected in
Tales of Pain and Wonder
,
From Weird and Distant Shores
,
Wrong Things
,
To Charles Fort
,
With Love
,
Alabaster
,
A is For Alien
and
The Ammonite Violin & Others.
She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

E. Catherine Tobler
lives and writes in Colorado – strange how that works out. Her fiction has appeared in, among others,
Sci Fiction
,
Fantasy Magazine
,
Realms of Fantasy
,
Talebones
and
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
. She is an active member of SFWA and senior editor at
Shimmer Magazine
. For more visit
ecatherine.com
.

Jay Lake
lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works on numerous writing and editing projects. His 2011 books are
Endurance
from Tor Books, along with paperback releases of two of his other titles. His short fiction appears regularly in literary and genre markets worldwide. Jay is a past winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and a multiple nominee for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.

Genevieve Valentine
is the author of
Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti
. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in
Clarkesworld
,
Strange Horizons
,
Journal of Mythic Arts
,
Fantasy Magazine
,
Lightspeed
and
Apex
, and in the anthologies
Federations
,
The Living Dead 2
,
The Way of the Wizard
,
Running with the Pack
,
Teeth
and more. She is a co-author of the forthcoming pop-culture book
Geek Wisdom
, and her non-fiction has appeared in publications such as
Fantasy Magazine
and
Weird Tales.
Her appetite for bad movies is insatiable, a tragedy she tracks on her
glvalentine.livejournal.com
.

Cat Rambo
lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. Among the places her work has appeared are
Asimov’s
,
Tor.com
and
Weird Tales.
Her collection,
Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight
, was a 2010 Endeavour Award finalist.