Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables (30 page)

“What is the purpose of the helmet you’re wearing, Professor?” asked the reporter from the
New York Herald.

“An excellent question, my good man,” the inventor said, reaching up to adjust the owlish eyepieces attached to his headgear.
“Since the Automatic Fireman is not a thinking being, it must be directed via remote control through special umbilicals attached to the control box I’m wearing. In order to guide my creation, I have devised a means of ‘seeing’ through its eyes via a series of reflecting speculum mirrors housed within the umbilicals connected to the binoculars mounted to my helmet. The theory is similar to the optics used in certain telescopes—”

Before Professor Tolliver could elaborate any further, there came a deafening crash, followed by a burst of flame from the second story, which sent a shower of broken window glass onto the firefighters on the street below. A second later one of the Bowery Boys staggered out the front door, his coat badly singed and his face covered in soot.

“The third floor collapsed!” he coughed, pulling aside the kerchief covering his mouth. “It took out a good portion of the second floor along with it! Slapsy’s dead; he was trying to get a sewing table down the stairs when it happened. Horseshoe Harry’s pinned down just inside the foyer!”

Before Mose or his second-in-command could react to the news, the Automatic Fireman calmly strode up the front steps and disappeared into the smoke-filled doorway, trailing its umbilicals behind it like Theseus in the Labyrinth.

The only light in the entrance hall of the tenement came from the fire consuming the upper floors, and the air was thick with choking clouds of smoke and swirling cinders. Fortunately, the Automatic Fireman had no need to breathe. The automaton tilted back its head as if to stare at the huge tangle of burning timber and shattered plaster that now filled the narrow stairwell. There was a faint whirring sound as Professor Tolliver, safely removed from the danger at hand, adjusted the focus on the Automatic Fireman’s irises. Hot ash drifted down from above, settling onto the Automatic Fireman’s copper skin like a hellish snow.

At the foot of the stairs lay Horseshoe Harry, smeared in soot and blood, pinned under a wooden support beam. The upper part of the timber was covered in crackling flames, and it was merely a matter of moments before the fire would burn its way down to
the trapped Bowery Boy. Horseshoe Harry raised his head, hoping to see one of his comrades coming to his rescue. Instead, he found himself staring up at the Automatic Fireman’s placid mannequin face as its telescopic eyes whirred and clicked in and out of focus.

“Bugger me,” the Bowery Boy groaned.

Just then the Automatic Fireman abruptly raised its axe arm. Horseshoe Harry closed his eyes and turned his face away from what he was certain would be a killing blow. Instead, the automaton’s fire-axe hand twirled about on its wrist and buried the pick jutting out of its pole into the burning timber while simultaneously dousing Harry with a flood of water from its left hand. Thus extinguishing the burning timber, it lifted the smoldering chunk of wood free of the trapped firefighter.

Horseshoe Harry tried to get to his feet, only to discover his legs were badly broken. Seeing his distress, the Automatic Fireman snaked his left arm forward, like the rope from a fakir’s basket, and wrapped it about Harry’s waist and pulled him upright. The Bowery Boy screamed in mortal agony as the automaton’s copper skin—superheated by the surrounding inferno—touched his own.

As if triggered by his screams, another fall of flaming debris came crashing down from the floor above, landing on the umbilicals that connected the Automatic Fireman to the outside world. In less than a heartbeat the steam-driven firefighter was not only struck blind, but completely paralyzed as well. Meanwhile, Horseshoe Harry continued to struggle, desperate to escape his would-be savior’s burning embrace, but the Automatic Fireman continued to hold tight. However, the automaton’s false face finally succumbed to the heat and began to melt, sliding from its metal skull like fried eggs off a greasy skillet.

“C
onfound it all!” Professor Tolliver said as he wrestled the helmet from his head. “I’ve lost contact!”

“I’ve had enough of this foolishness!” Mose snapped,
snatching up his fire axe. “The challenge be damned! I’m going in!” Upon entering the burning tenement, he was guided through the blinding smoke by the sound of Horseshoe Harry’s curses and screams, and found the former Bowery Boys leader held fast by Professor Tolliver’s Automatic Fireman. Mose grabbed the automaton’s arm, in hopes of wresting Horseshoe Harry free of its bear-trap grip, only to recoil from the heat that seared through his heavy canvas gloves as if they were lace. Mose then swung his mighty axe, the head of which was the size of an anvil and sharper than a straight razor, and severed the Automatic Fireman’s left arm at its shoulder with a single blow. Live steam, loose gears, and snapped pulleys exploded from the automaton’s wound in place of blood and bone, as the Automatic Fireman finally loosed its grip on the hapless Bowery Boy. Horseshoe Harry collapsed onto the floor, unable to stand on his shattered legs. Mose swooped down and, slinging his badly wounded comrade over his back like a sack of potatoes, made his way back through the choking fumes as flaming chunks from the rapidly disintegrating upper stories rained down upon him.

Sykesky and the others rushed forward to take possession of their injured friend as Mose exited the building. However, one look at Horseshoe Harry told them there was no point in rushing him to a doctor. The Bowery Boy was horribly burned down one side of his body, from head to foot, as if he had been held against a red-hot griddle. As Sykesky wrapped Horseshoe Harry in a blanket, the mortally wounded firefighter coughed out a lungful of smoke, gave a final moan, and moved no more.

Professor Tolliver cringed as the giant fireman, his eyes blazing like lamps in his soot-covered face, stomped toward him. “N-now, Mr. Humphries!” he stammered. “Let’s not do anything rash….”

Mose leaned down so that he was face-to-face with the older man and poked a sausagelike forefinger at his chest, leaving a sooty smudge on his shirtfront. “The only reason I ain’t taking you apart right now like I did your tin soldier is outta respect for my dear, departed ma, you understand? Rest her soul, she
admired you as a genius and thought you was a great man. And I thought so, too. But now I see you ain’t no better than Barnum, what with your pet reporters trailing after you. Hell, you’re
worse
than he is! At least with Barnum, you
know
he’s a humbug!”

“What happened to your friend was a horrible, horrible mistake,” Professor Tolliver replied. “It was never my intention to harm anyone. You must believe me; my professional life has been dedicated to nothing but improving the lives of my fellow man….”

“Well, Professor, if you
really
wanted to improve us ‘fellow men,’ you’d create something that would help us
do
our jobs, not
replace
us! If you’re so damned smart, why can’t you figure out there’s some things in life people got no business handin’ over to machines?”

Mose halted his harangue of the frightened scientist as a disheveled woman with a blanket wrapped about her shoulder like a shawl screamed and broke free of the crowd of spectators, pointing at the topmost floor of the burning tenement. Standing framed in one of the windows was a tiny girl-child, little more than a baby, still dressed in her nightclothes, looking down at the crowd below as she cried for her mother.

The distraught woman ran to Mose and grabbed his sleeve. “That’s my Rosey up there! She got separated from the rest of the family on the stairwell. We thought she was down here on the street, but she must have gotten scared and run back upstairs!
Please,
you have to save my baby!”

The firefighters already on the ladders tried to make a grab for the window ledge, but it was just out of reach. “It’s no use, boss!” one of them shouted down. “She’s beyond reach!”

“She’s beyond
your
reach, but not mine!” Mose replied. With that, he scrambled up the ladder as quick as a monkey, his fire axe clenched between his teeth like a pearl diver’s knife. Upon reaching the top of the ladder, he braced himself against the last rung and jumped. The crowd below gasped as Mose grabbed the fifth-story ledge, dangling by one hand as the flames from the floor below licked at the copper soles of his boots.

Using all his strength, Mose pulled himself up onto the window ledge. Looking up, he found himself staring eye-to-eye at little Rosey, who was watching him through the window. The toddler screamed at the sight of the redheaded giant with the sooty face and fled deeper into the three-room apartment.

Mose took his axe and smashed the window, then climbed into the front room, which served as both parlor and dining room for its tenants. The room was beginning to fill with smoke, which rose from the floorboards and slid under the door like invading phantoms. He crossed the room in less than a stride and touched the knob of the door that led to the exterior hallway, only to jerk his hand away. The fire that had consumed the third floor and demolished the second was now busily destroying what remained of the interior of the building, shooting up the central stairwell as if it were a chimney flue. If he wanted to escape the same fate as Horseshoe Harry, he had to find the little girl and get out of there immediately.

He entered the second room in the apartment, which was half the size of the front room, and without windows or ventilation. Although the room was as dark as the bottom of a coal sack, he could make out the silhouette of a metal bedstead pressed against one wall. No doubt this was the parents’ bedroom. From his experience fighting fires in the tenements of the Lower East Side, he knew there was yet another room directly ahead of him. As he groped through the inky blackness, there came a loud
clang
, followed by a
slosh
as his boot struck the slop jar at the foot of the bed. A second later he brushed through a pair of curtains stitched together from old flour sacks, which separated the parents’ bedroom from the second inner room, where the children slept. It, too, was without light or fresh air, and barely larger than the wardrobe he used to sleep in. Most of the floor space was occupied by a mattress stuffed with rags. From somewhere in the darkness of the room came the whimpering of a frightened child.

“Don’t be afraid, Rosey,” Mose said gently. “I’m here to take you to your ma.”

Upon the mention of her mother, the little girl ceased her
sniffling and came forward from her hiding place, her white nightgown seeming to shimmer like a ghost in the tiny, dungeonlike room. Mose bent down and picked up the child with one hand, holding her as he would a china doll. Cradling Rosey in the crook of one arm, he turned and headed the way he’d come. But as they passed back through the parents’ room, they were greeted by a pall of heavy smoke.

Upon stepping into the front room, Mose saw to his horror that the fire had finally breeched the apartment. If he was going to save not only the child but himself as well, he had no choice but to brave the wall of flames that now blocked his way….

“W
hat’s keeping them?” Rosey’s mother asked no one in particular as she stared up at the smoke and flames billowing from the window Mose had entered minutes before. “Why aren’t they back yet?”

“It’s real easy to get turned around in the smoke,” Sykesky said, trying his best to ease the woman’s worry. “But if anyone can save your Rosey, it’s Mose.”

“What do we do about the ladder?” one of the firefighters asked. “Some of the boys are afraid of getting burnt holding it.”

“Tell ’em to keep it in place!” Sykesky snapped. “And I don’t care if their hair catches fire! That ladder stays up until Mose comes down it!”

As if on cue, the Bowery Boys’ leader suddenly burst from the fifth-story window, wrapped in fire from collar to pants cuff. He struck the forty-foot ladder feet-first, remaining upright the entire way as he slid down its length, his coat and pants ablaze, both hands firmly clamped onto his stovepipe hat to keep it from flying off his head. As Mose hit the ground, he was quickly doused with water, which extinguished the flames that wreathed his body. The giant took a step, then two, steam rising from his scorched frame, before collapsing onto the ground. His skin was so black it looked as if he’d been dipped in a pitch bucket, and his shock of bushy red hair had been burned down to his skull.
Sykesky ran forward to tend to his fallen friend, but not even the Colossus of Broome Street could survive such grievous wounds.

“My baby!” the woman wailed, upon seeing the firefighter’s empty arms. “Where’s my Rosey?”

With his dying breath, Mose reached up and removed the stovepipe hat from his head. And out crawled little Rosey, safe and sound.