Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion

Airship Shape

&

Bristol Fashion

Edited by

Roz Clarke & Joanne Hall

Wizard’s Tower Press

&

The BristolCon Foundation

Trowbridge, England

Contents

Epigraph
, by Gareth L. Powell

Introduction
, by Joanne Hall & Roz Clarke

Less Than Men?

Case of the Vapours
, by Ken Shinn

Brassworth
, by Christine Morgan

The Lesser Men Have No Language
, by Deborah Walker

Brass and Bone
, by Joanne Hall

Lost Souls

The Girl with Red Hair
, by Myfanwy Rodman

Artifice Perdu
, by Pete Sutton

Miss Butler and the Handlander Process
, by John Hawkes-Reed

Something In The Water
, by Cheryl Morgan

The Chronicles of Montague and Dalton: The Hunt for Alleyway Agnes
, by Scott Lewis

Travelling Light

The Sound of Gyroscopes
, by Jonathan L. Howard

Flight of Daedalus
, by Piotr Świetlik

The Traveller’s Apprentice
, by Ian Millsted

Lord Craddock: Ascension
, by Stephen Blake

The Lanterns of Death Affair
, by Andy Bigwood

Take a walk around Bristol, and history seeps from the walls. The city can claim more than its fair share of firsts, including the first iron-hulled steamship, the first female doctor, the first chocolate bar and the first use of nitrous oxide as an anaesthetic, the invention of the Plimsoll line, the first undersea telegraph cable, the world’s first test tube baby and the first transplant organ grown from stem cells, and a large share of the world’s first supersonic airliner. Now, from this fertile ground comes an anthology charting other realities and alternate histories, in a collection as rich and varied as the true history of this great British city.

Gareth L. Powell

Welcome to
Airship Shaped and Bristol Fashion
, the first in what we hope will be a series of anthologies produced in association with the BristolCon Foundation. When we first discussed the idea of using any extra money generated through BristolCon to give something back to the local speculative fiction scene, we came up with a simple mission statement:

To encourage the creation and enjoyment of Speculative Fiction, in all its forms, with a focus on the West Country and South Wales.

We have done this through BristolCon, through our Fringe events which include readings from up and coming local SF&F writers, and, now, for the first time, through this anthology.

We wanted to provide a platform for new writing, so we’re delighted that so many of the stories in this book are from previously-unpublished writers. We have worked closely with our authors throughout the editorial process, offering guidance, support and encouragement where it was needed, and all of them came through for us in remarkable, unexpected ways. We hope they take away from the experience as much as they’ve given us; it’s been a learning curve on both sides!

The theme of the anthology comes back to our Bristolian roots. We looked at Bristol, city of brass and rivets, home to Brunel’s SS Great Britain and the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and we thought “Steampunk.” And then we thought,
“Why not?”
But we wanted to do more than collect stories about swashbuckling adventurers in rose-tinted goggles, so we asked for stories that delved a little deeper into the dark side of Victoriana. We received a terrific spread of stories, ranging from light-hearted to shadowy and tragic. Some strong themes emerged, and we have organised the anthology to bring these to the fore. “Less Than Men?”, opening the anthology, deals with slavery and the growing desire for emancipation. “Lost Souls” is where you’ll find the creepy and the fantastic; ghosts and ghouls and wandering spirits. And “Travelling Light” is where you’ll find the bold adventurers; the magnificent men and women in their flying machines, slicing through space and time.

We are indebted to Gareth L. Powell for his epigraph but most importantly for the excellent title. Thanks also go to Wizard’s Tower Press for support during the editing and publishing process, and for pushing us to do a steampunk anthology in the first place, Kate the proof reader for herding everyone’s semi-colons into the right places, Andy Bigwood for the lovely cover art, and of course all our authors. See you on the other side of the aetheric portal…

Roz Clarke & Joanne Hall
November 2013

PART I

Less Than Men?

- Ken Shinn -

“Bodysnatching.”

I paused as I raised the match to my cigarette.

“That’s… unusual. Resurrectionism is pretty much unheard of in these enlightened times.”

It had given me pause. I felt unwelcome heat at my fingertips, applied the flame to the fag, and shook it out. “So, why bring it to me? Wouldn’t the police be more obvious?”

“Mr. Bowyer, this is a private matter. A valuable possession has been stolen, but that is very much my household’s concern. We would like this affair resolved with the minimum of bureaucratic interference, and we are prepared to pay you handsomely.”

She wafted smoke from her own cigarette elegantly away with a velvet-gloved hand. A small woman in her early twenties. Slender almost to the point of skinniness, but not unattractive, with a sharp, intelligent pair of green eyes and a mop of red hair pinned carefully in place. Not my usual sort of customer; altogether too well spoken, too well dressed, and too wealthy.

“Mrs. Willans, if you’ll pardon my saying so, it’s rare to find anyone who describes a slave’s corpse as a valuable possession.”

“But this man was one of our most trusted servants. A highly-educated and much-loved family member. And he was an extremely expensive Vapour. Fluent in eight languages, well-versed in etiquette, expert on champagnes, and an experienced chef in schools from the Orient to the Mediterranean. My husband and I are most anxious to discover why someone decided to break into his sarcophagus, on our own grounds, and remove his body for purposes unknown.”

“I see. A family affair, as it were. Well, you’ve piqued my interest. I’ll investigate for you. My fee is fixed at 10 guineas a day, plus expenses.”

“That’s a high price.”

“It’s a high-risk occupation.”

“I can imagine. The constant risk of eviction.”

“I’m the businessman, Mrs. Willans. And that’s my price.”

“Done.” She shot out a hand, gripped mine, and shook it quickly and firmly. “Start as soon as you’re ready.”

The ball was awash with the best quality foods, wines, and beers. I was in no hurry to start immediately, and told her so. She inclined her head graciously.

“Then at least have a good look around at this gathering. It seems highly likely that a member of this household was key to the success of the theft; it was carried out undetected, after all.”

Mrs. Willans didn’t beat about the bush. I rather liked her. Pausing only to snag a fresh stout from a passing Vapour flunky, his whirring clockwork implants freshly-polished against his dark skin and crisp linens, I mingled as unobtrusively as I could.

The gathering was as generally vacuous as it was large. There weren’t many unpleasant individuals, but the impression that my meanderings gave me was of a throng more interested in the latest fashions in gowns, snuff and hunting-horses than in the more pressing issues of the day. I kept a pleasantly neutral expression. After all, they were at worst annoying, and that still wasn’t a crime to my knowledge.

A knot of revellers was gathered around a stage discreetly tucked to one side. On the low dais, a string quartet performed a Strauss waltz with practised mediocrity — much technique, little feeling. At centre stage, a dancing pair of Vapours — one man, one woman — were whirling gracefully, both decked out in incongruously Oriental silks. They were clearly more expensive than the norm, more than usually physically attractive, and their steam-driven workings were clearly designed for aesthetics as much as practicality, looking more like moving jewellery against their smooth brown faces and wrists than the clanking chunks of metal of the more common slave — oh, so sorry — “clockwork servant”. I had problems with that mealy-mouthed phrase. It suggested an automaton out of Verne or Wells, rather than the blunt synthesis of metal and invariably black flesh of the actuality. However delicately the workings may be fashioned, you were still left looking at somebody who’d been forcibly transformed, purely for the sake of improving their work.

The couple passed gracefully back and forth; the music swirled and fluttered as it was meant to, then the man stopped in his tracks. The music stuttered on for a few bars, then stopped.

A look of anger crossed the man’s calm features. He spun on his heel, snatched a violin from a startled musician, and raised it like a club. And then he froze in his tracks. A fine but clear mist of steam, far greater than the usual gentle hissing caused by the everyday mechanical workings of the average Vapour, gushed from the valves at his temples. His face creased into a mask of agony, and he sank awkwardly to his knees while his partner looked on in dismay.