Dieselpunk: An Anthology (23 page)

I tore off my helmet and goggles so she could see the revulsion in my face. “That’s all you have to say?!” I quickly looked back to make sure Broman was still far down the catwalk, then leaned in and spoke as softly as I could while remaining audible, “That was no accident!”

Her goggled eyes and unconcerned tone were emotionless.

“
No, it was not. Nor will it be an accident when the Council elects you acting-voice tomorrow. Our hold on them is more reliable than our favor with the commons. Though the Guild cannot speak ill of Mr. Condon’s character, his death was necessary for us to uphold one of our primary duties, preserving the safety of the Shaking City. Allow me to extrapolate.

“
You see, Mr. Lyles, in our study of the social sciences, we have found isolationism to be an outdated and, therefore, deadly theory. Eventually, either the Trekkar or the zarr will decide that whatever loss in life must be paid to conquer us will be an acceptable loss. The longer we wait, the larger their armies become and the stronger their weaponry. We have perfected our tectonic gears, our electric artillery, and even stretched the limits of desert and subterranean agriculture, but we still rely on foreigners for trade in many resources. If a siege ensues, the shrinking trade routes that our stationary cannons protect will collapse. If the Trekkar lay siege, the zarr will relax, bolstering his army while we fight his war. The inverse is also true. Judging by the political and technical information you have provided us with, we see only one way for the Shaking City to survive and flourish. We must forge the alliance of minds and arms with the Trekkar.”

I would have been less shocked if she’d asked to marry me. Timin held the elevator open while Broman trudged in and detached his safety line. He patted my back and tugged on mine.

“You heard the chief manager. Now put your helmet back on and transfer your safety line back to the elevator. We can talk as we ascend, but there will be aftershocks.” This time I switched the lines without his assistance.

“
If it makes you feel any better, we got the idea from you, Mr. Lyles.” Aor continued nonchalantly while I fumbled with my goggles. “We have nothing at all to fear from letting Trekkar priests learn about the tectonic cog system. The truth is, knowledge of our secret system is useless anywhere but here. Without deep underground access to the Fault, our technology has no value. Tectonic cogs, the shafts and junctions, all of it — worthless. Even the secret of our electric artillery, which could be potentially used away from the Fault, has limited uses without a similarly massive power source. We’re happy to let the rest of the world think that perfect mechanical understanding of physics is what gives our guns the added velocity.”

“
The Fault extends beyond the desert! What if someone finds a ravine in the mountains? There are other faults in the world! Couldn’t our foes find a bottomless chasm like the one Gethmisca was founded on elsewhere?”

All three of them laughed before Aor continued. “Another geological feature as unique as what we’re working in would be as rare as finding another Unsalted Sea! If they find another suitable place to copy our city across the world, let them. They can’t practically threaten us with war from across the opposite continents!

“The harsh fact is, we have no military influence outside the range of our cannons and our enemies know it. As soon as the Trekkar perfect their mobile-armored units enough to cross the desert without using our routes, we won’t even be able to maintain our trade influence. We need to learn how to make those machines for ourselves, and if all they want is the secrets of our cogs, one fortress, and the blood of a diplomat sealing the deal, that’s a small price to pay.”

“
But-but you
murdered
Condon! Worse, you made no attempt to conceal it from me! You could have cut his line yourself and pushed him over the edge for all you did to hide your actions from me!”

Broman pulled an industrial carbon knife concealed in his suit’s wrist. “Sometimes, that’s how they go down. We prefer a quake but we’re prepared to take stronger actions.”

Aor gently put her hand on my shoulder, much as Broman had earlier. She was no less menacing. “We don’t wish to conceal anything from you, Mr. Lyles. If you are going to be the voice of Gethmisca, you must understand who really runs the Shaking City. Every aspect of the city.”

“
We’re survivalists, just like your traditionalist faction.” Timin motioned for Broman to put away his blade as he spoke, “We’re not afraid to make tough choices. You just saw us make one. We don’t have the social skills of people like you and Condon, but we’re smart enough to understand how the system works. The Guild employs the most intelligent citizens. It always has. The Guild built the Council, the vote of no confidence rules, and all the other bylaws of our flexible government. Our people must be as capable of violent motion as the tower is and, like the tower, we survive because the best science and the best minds are behind our movements.”

Timin spoke on, countering my words even as I shaped them in my mind.

“If you announce the murder publicly, the Council will deny it and launch a full investigation, in which you will be the prime suspect. After all, you are the obvious choice to succeed him with his primary aid an appointee and his second a captive…and you did attach his safety line before the quake. We all saw you.”

I knew I had a choice at that point, a choice that would forever alter my fate. I thought of my future and all that I wanted for myself, my family, and the Shaking City. Mostly, I couldn’t help but think of what Condon’s body might have looked like, crushed between those cogs, maybe even causing a jam.

“I will begin my plans for negotiating an alliance with the Trekkar tonight.”

“
Mr. Lyles, you’ve made a wise choice.” I still swear I could hear Broman smiling beneath his helmet. I looked straight into where I thought his eyes must have been.

“
Please forgive me if I ask what choice you gave Mr. Condon?”

In response to my accusation, Aor raised her visor to show a glimpse of her face. I couldn’t tell if I was reading regret or frustration from her furled brow. “He had a choice, Mr. Lyles. You heard him promise that there would be no alliance of minds with the Trekkar as long as he lived. How long have you worked with the man and studied his political career? His behavior was as outdated as his theories, as stubborn as stone. Structures of stone fall in a quake. To stay standing, a tower must be flexible, as we have built ours. Cogs can handle years of stress with proper maintenance, but even the toughest cogs must one day be replaced or retired. Changing cogs to keep the Shaking City standing strong is our responsibility.”

That day I accepted my fate as a living cog in a social machine I could scarcely understand. Over the years, the engineers have moved me from one rod, position, or title to another. They’ve placed cogs of many different types in next to me, but I always keep spinning. As long as I keep making things work during the quakes, don’t melt under the heat or crack in a jam, they won’t find the need to replace me before I retire from the stress.

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The Phallus of Osiris

By Craig Gabrysch

“You even
think
of brushing that Limey foot of yours against my leg one more time, Mr. Aleister Crowley,” Tabitha said as she leaned across the table, “and you’ll be walking lopsided for the rest of your short, miserable life. Now pull it back before I use it to feed the poor and homeless of Russia.” She was close enough to the fat, balding British man’s face that she could smell the stale opium and gin exuding from his pores. The “wizard” retracted his foot from Tabitha’s calf, a meek look on his face. Tabitha leaned back in her seat. “Now,” she said, folding her calloused hands primly in front of her, “back to what I was saying. You may think your little order — what was it called again?”

“
The A-A.”

“
The A-A? Like two letters?”

“
Yes.”

“
What do the letters stand for?”

“
Its true meaning, madame, is hidden from the uninitiated.”

Tabitha snorted. “Right,” she said. “Well, you and your little secret order ain’t getting your hands on that artifact. I done been shipped across the ocean and spent more weeks on trains than a dogs got ticks, and I mean to bring it back to the Knights Templar. You and your
compañeros
go ahead and pack on up before I get testy.”

She turned in her chair and hollered at the waiter for service, her voice rising above the general drunken roar of the proletariat. The café where they were sitting was smokey and crowded, everyone shouting and passing what Tabitha could only assume were political pamphlets around. That’s Russians for you. When it came to politics, people’d just shout about it till everyone else agreed they were right. A lot like America, come to think of it.

Tabitha realized Crowley was still saying something, but before she could turn to ask him why he hadn’t left yet, the waiter arrived. He didn’t speak any English, but luckily he and Tabitha both spoke enough Czech for her to order a
pemeni
and a small bottle of vodka. The
pemeni
was like a meat pie, and it was like finding a little piece of Omaha, Nebraska’s Little Bohemia in Russia. She smiled faintly at the prospect of the food. These Russians knew how to make a good meat pie.

She turned back to Crowley.

“You still yammering?”

“
Miss Piotrowski—”

“
That’s Dame Piotrowski to you, Crowley. Only gentlemen get to call me miss.”

“
Dame
Piotrowski then. Fine, I rather prefer that honorific to the drab miss—”

“
Told you to hurry the fuck up, Crowley.”

Crowley held his hands up, palms out. “Dame Piotrowski, I’d like to offer you an exchange that I truly believe will be worth your while.”

“Offer away.”

“
I can offer you knowledge of the most revelatory secret of antiquity.”

“
Is it God’s ever lasting forgiveness?”

Crowley laughed deeply. “God’s ever lasting forgiveness? More like freedom from that archaic framework of belief, from that child’s fairy—”

“Listen here, fat man,” Tabitha interjected, leaning forward and pointing a finger at Crowley’s face, “you may think God ain’t real, but I sure as hell know he is. I murdered two people in cold-blood and was told by one of them six months later how I could be forgiven. So, for the last ten years I’ve been redeeming myself. I’ve fought demons, devils, shoggoths, lycanthropes, skin-walkers, undead Vikings, Quetzalcoatl, and a hundred other things I’d prefer not to name just because they might pop in and say hello. Every time I fight my way out I know I’m one step closer to forgiveness. So, you got any forgiveness for a woman who shot her husband and his lover?”

“
No,” Crowley said flatly, sinking a little in his chair.

“
Reckon that’s too bad then.”

“
I once was contacted by an angel,” Crowley offered. “It was many years ago in Egypt.”

“
I was too. Last week, in fact. The Metatron hisself flew into my colder-than-a-witch’s-teet ship-cabin while on my way here from bum-fuck-Norway. Told me I was going to meet a fat Limey magician that couldn’t take a hint. Said God wouldn’t mind if I beat him till shit ran out his ears. Also suggested I leave him naked as the day he was born in a Petrograd alley. Reckon I wasn’t sure of what he was talking about, but guess I am now.”

The waiter arrived with Tabitha’s food and set it on the table. The young man left to get her vodka and a glass while she stared into Crowley’s wilting face. After a moment, Tabitha narrowed her eyes further and said, “This places makes the best damned
pemeni
I’ve ever had. It reminds me an awful lot of the
runza
my Grannie made before she passed. When that waiter comes back with my drink, I’m gonna start eating that delicious meat-filled dough. And I’m gonna
enjoy it, Mr. Alesiter Crowley. So much so that I ain’t gonna re
member you’re still here. But you know what’ll happen when I fin
ish eating the only piece of childhood joy and warmth I have in this whole goddamn country?”

“
You will recall once again that I am here?”

Tabitha nodded.

“Yes,” said Crowley and stood. He began fishing in his pocket. “Yes, Dame Piotrowski, I believe I understand. I will be going now. I’d like to pay for your dinner, so that there will perhaps be no hard feelings.” He put a wad of rubles on the table. Crowley bowed slightly and turned to leave just as the waiter was returning. The waiter put the bottle and glass on her table. Tabitha thanked him with a nod of her head and poured herself a drink.

Russia may be cold, the crazies may be in town, and she may have been far from the country and wide-open plains she loved, but at least the vodka was the best she’d ever tasted.

Fresh snow crunched beneath Tabitha’s leather boots as she stepped onto the sidewalk. She pulled her grandpa’s old buffalo coat tighter around her, her breath billowing out into the swirling flakes. It was cold in Petrograd, that was for sure, but she was surprised, and almost disappointed, it wasn’t much colder than Nebraska. She pulled down the flaps on her fur hat, tied the strings together, and began walking up the street to her small hotel. It was a nice place, a little too nice for her tastes. She preferred camping to sleeping in a bed. The Templar almost couldn’t sleep anymore without her horse’s reigns looped around her wrist.

The abbot of the Order of the Knights Templar had sent her to Petrograd to acquire an artifact. It was said the artifact would give whomever held it the power of a god, and cause all men and women to obey that person. The artifact in question was the Phallus of Osiris. Word had gotten out that someone had found it in Siberia years before and had brought it to Petrograd. The crazies were coming out of the woodworks, everyone from that fat Limey to the intelligence services. The abbot seemed to think it would turn the tide of the war raging over Europe.

According to Egyptian myth, and the way Tabitha knew it, in the beginning there were originally two sibling gods who married and ruled as the first pharaohs over Egypt. They were Osiris and Isis. They, like every family out there, had one piece-of-shit evil sibling that just couldn’t stand either one of ‘em. His name was Set. Not ironically at all to Tabitha, who had a bastard brother who was a middle child, Set was the middle of five children. Well, years go on and Osiris and Isis run their country wisely and well, helping the people of the world. But Set’s been conspiring the whole time against the happy couple.

Set and seventy-two others get the exact measurements of Osiris somehow, and they build a wonderful chest made from the world’s finest woods. Cedar from Lebanon and that kind of thing. Well, they build this chest and then Set throws a great party in honor of Osiris, but he only invites the seventy-two conspirators as guests. At the party, after everyone gets drunk and full of food and are having a good time, Set announces that he has this chest. He brings it out and shows it to the crowd, and says he’ll give it to whomever fits it the most perfectly.

It’s unclear, depending on the version you hear, whether Isis was at the party or not, but Tabitha liked to believe she wasn’t. Otherwise, she would have slapped Osiris for being such an idiot and stopped the next part from happening.

Well, all the partygoers try their luck at it, but none of them fit. Osiris, drunken lug he is, decides to climb on in the chest his evil brother made. He says, “Hey, y’all, this sumbitch fits me just right. It’s mine.”

So Set says, “Go ahead and have it then!” He slams the lid shut and he and the other conspirators seal it shut with molten lead. Osiris died, and Set cast the chest into the Nile. Isis, at this point, ran with her baby, Horus, and hid him from Set. Afterward, she sets out to find Osiris’s body so he can get a proper burial and his soul can move on. Eventually she does, but after finding the chest, Set finds it again and rends the body into fourteen pieces. He scatters them up and down the Nile River so Isis will never find them.

Isis goes looking again, but only finds thirteen of the fourteen pieces. Some versions of the story say the fourteenth piece, the Phallus of Osiris, was eaten by some wayward, unclean fish. Other, older versions, just say it was never found. Whichever the case, Isis remade the god with a replacement prick.

Now which version of the legend was correct? The older version of course. Which means Isis missed one important piece of the god Osiris when she was out looking. Someone in Petrograd, though, hadn’t missed it.

“
Can’t believe it’s 1916 and I’m in Russia chasing after some dead god’s cock, on behalf of some mystical Order of the Knight Templar,” Tabitha muttered, turning a corner onto her hotel’s street. It seemed like just last week she was in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, riding and shooting and drinking and not having a damned care in the world. But it hadn’t been a week since then, it had been over a decade. Now she was hunting demons and artifacts, and defending the earth from the denizens of Hell. All because some pope in the 1750s decided the Knights Templar needed to be restarted to help stop the Darkness. Tabitha kicked a big clump of snow and kept walking.

Pssssst!

Tabitha stopped. The sound had come from one of the numerous alleyways across the narrow road. Seemed to Tabitha there were more alleyways than roads in this town. She turned and squinted into the darkness.

Psssst!

“I fucking heard you the first time,” she whispered back. “What?”

A man stepped far enough from the alley for the weak gas lamps to illuminate his body, but not his face. He beckoned with a crooked finger. Tabitha hated when people did that. She opened her coat so she’d have access to either her sword or her pistol and stomped across the snow-covered street. The man stepped back into the shadows as she approached. Tabitha stopped at the opening of the alley, left hand on her cocked hip and dangling her right hand near her Colt 1911. “Ya got me,” she whispered, “so go ahead and tell me what you want. And, so help me God, if you’re a representative of some stupid fucking secret society I ain’t heard of, I’m gonna tan your hide so bad some cowpoke’ll be able to use your back for chaps.”

“Woah there, Tabitha,” said the man in the alley.

“
Harry Wight? That you?”

“
Shhhhhh
. Of coure it’s me, dearie. Who else would the State Department send to investigate some artifact in the middle of a civil-war-torn icebox? Now, get off the street before someone sees us talking to each other.”

“
Well, reckon they’ll just see me, since you’re hiding in that damned alley. Now say your piece and be done with it,” Tabitha said, both hands on her hips now. She and Harry had once had a thing together. The affair started the usual way. They’d worked a mission stopping some crazy Comanche from raising an army of undead braves. One thing led to another and they were in bed together. It had been off-again-on-again for a few years, Tabitha seeing Harry when he was out in her neck of the Western states. She’d liked it, she wasn’t going to lie. Then she found out from one of the other State Department agents that Harry was married. One thing led to another and they hadn’t spoken since Tabitha had suggested how great Harry would look with no testicles.

“
Still upset with me, I take it?”

“
Told you what I’d do the next time I saw you. That still stands.”

“
Fine,” Harry said, stepping out of the shadows. He’d aged well, with only a little grey reaching the dark hair at his temples. Harry’d always been so prissy about his hair and his looks, the type to preen. Yeah, he was handsome. But so what? He was a lying, cheating bastard. Tabitha tapped her foot.

“
Now what do you want?” asked Tabitha.

“
I think we should work together on this Phallus of Osiris mission. We can cover more area and be more effective together than we can alone.”

“
No,” said Tabitha.

“
Why not?”

“
Because I don’t trust you, you lying sumbitch.”